Caught Between the Banister
by Hawk Clowd
Summary: One day on his way to work, Duo catches sight of a little boy in need of some help. Little does he know that this little boy is going to put him through the ride of his life... Yaoi.
1. Mike

Caught Between the Banister

Part One: Mike

Disclaimer: don't own them.  Don't want them.  Don't need them.  So there.  Thanks go out to Endymion, Blue Dragon, and Crimson Knight for reading and telling me what they thought.  I'd also like to thank Hobson for the banister idea, Leilla for being such a great sport and for the constant inspiration she provided, and TKMaxwell777, who didn't like Duo referring to Christ so much but did a beta which was both wonderful and quick.  Thanks, everyone.

**Warnings/Rating: yaoi/shonen ai, though not in this part.  Psychological references.  My usual insanity.  Fun stuff like that.  This part is rated PG for a few four-letter words.  That's all.**

**Archived: um… nowhere as of yet.  Any offers?  Archiving is free, of course, but I do like to be asked.  Gratuitous mentions and linkage will go to they who offer archiving!**

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You know how little kids always stick their heads between the rails of a banister?  It happens to almost every kid at some point or another, no matter what sort of stories their parents or guardians tell them about bad little kids who put their head between the banister rails and got stuck there forever.  It happens no matter how many times they see or hear about it happening.  It's a fact of life.  It happens without fail, to every kid, on a regular basis.  Kind of like Haley's Comet or something.  Why _is_ that?

I've got a theory about it, actually.  I think it's a chemical thing.  Around the time the kid turns four or five or six or so something just goes off in their brain--an alarm of sorts.  That little alarm tells them to do something stupid and it won't go off until they do it.  So, since the alarm is really loud and annoying, they force their head through a banister.  Key word there is _force_--if you know your facts about little kids, you know that it's rare that they can get out of a situation like that by themselves.  They _always_ get stuck.  Always.  It never fails.

I'm still not quite sure why _that happens.  You'd think it would be just as hard to get their heads in as it is to get them out, but _no_, it doesn't work that way.  So what happens?  Do their heads swell up?  Do the bars shrink?  Is it magic dust?  Pixies?  Some sort of weird molecular reconfiguration?  There's just no explanation--unless you believe that thing about their ears getting in the way.  That, in my opinion, is bullshit._

I did it too, don't get me wrong!  So did Quatre, I think, if I remember right.  He mentioned something about pulling the infamous banister trick and taking almost an hour to get out--with a lot of help from his nursemaid.  Lucky bastard.

Hey, don't look at me like that!  I've got a _right to say that--I didn't _have_ a house when I pulled the banister trick and I sure as hell didn't have a nurse to get me out.  I just had Solo and __he wasn't all that much help._

You know how some houses have banister things leading up to their front doors--the black metal railing lodged in cement that goes up to the front stoop?  Well, I somehow managed to get my head stuck in one of _those, right on the street where everyone could kick me as they went by.  Solo used to tell that story to people in great detail, even describing the way my ass was sticking up in the air and how I kept on waving my arms around, trying to get out.  He probably even kept track of how many people pinched or kicked me.  I don't remember him ever telling anybody what _he_ was doing that entire time._

I don't think he ever said anything about how I got out, either.  It was a very creative method, if I do say so myself.

But I'm rambling.  Sorry, I do that a lot.  I started talking about banisters for a reason, believe it or not.  I'm going to tell a story about something that happened to me a few days back.  That's right, kiddies, pull up a chair and listen to Uncle Duo tell boring stories about his life.  Hell, it could be worse.  It could be Grandpa Wu-Bear.  He'd bore you to death with justice rants and then wonder why no one was listening to him.  It's either him or me--take your pick.

That's what I thought.

Okay, so get this.  I was walking out of my apartment a couple of days ago on my way to work--why the company is letting a twenty year-old without even a high school diploma or anything work for them is beyond me, especially given my status, but whatever--when something caught my eye.  Let me rephrase that--_someone caught my eye._

My apartment complex looks like a really fancy hotel from the inside, with great big circular staircases and lots and lots of banisters.  Don't ask me how I managed to afford it on my salary--I'm not quite sure how I did it myself.

Anyway, I had just locked my door when I saw someone--a little boy, about five years old, I guessed--on his hands and knees on the floor.  At first glance it looked as though there was a decapitated child kneeling on the floor and it took me a minute to realize just what was going on there.  As soon as I figured it out, though, I wondered how the kid had managed to get his head through those things.  It couldn't have been very easy.  I went over, fighting an urge to kick the kid.  Kind of like revenge for my own bad staircase experience, I guess, or living my own childhood again through him.  Whatever.

"Hi.  You stuck?" I asked, smiling as I squatted down.

"Ahuh."

"How long have you been out here?"

"_Forever."_

"Oh."  I had to consider that for a minute before I remembered that little kids have a tendency to exaggerate.  It probably just _felt like he'd been stuck there for an eternity and beyond.  "How'd you get stuck?"_

"I don't know."

That amused me, really, but I decided not to comment on it.  "You want a hand getting out?"

"Ahuh."

"Okay.  I'll go get some stuff to help, so you just hang out right here, okay?  Don't go anywhere."

"Ahuh."

All right, so the kid was rather monotonous.  What was I expecting, anyway?  For him to start treating me like his best friend because I went up to talk to him?  He was stuck in a banister, for Christ's sake!  At least he was cute, in one of those midget boy kind of ways.  Anyway, I went back to my apartment and dug around under my bed for an old box, the one I'd been storing old stuff in since time began.  Useless little things, most of which I filched from all the places where I used to work.  Keepsakes or something.  Or maybe I just liked to take things.  Old habits die hard, I guess.

Having located the box, I removed a choice object and went back the hallway, kneeling next to the boy.  I displayed the tube of stuff I'd taken from my box and unscrewed the top, squeezing a generous amount of it into my palm.  The kid made a face when I started rubbing the stuff on one side of his head, around his ears and neck, and I grinned.

"Don't like this?"

"It's cold.  And it feels icky."

"But it'll work.  It'll come off, too, after you take a bath or two."  I smiled.  "What's your name?"

"Michael."

"Nice name.  Can I call you Mike?"

"Ahuh."

I grinned again.  That's the beauty of little kids, especially now that the war's over.  They trust _everybody.  For all Mike knew, I was a homicidal maniac and pedophiliac who liked to have my way with little children before I baked them in the microwave.  Not that I would, really.  Even I know better than that--I'd bake him in the oven with the heat up around three-fifty or three-seventy five and baste him with a kind of golden honey sauce.  It would make the apartment smell really cheerful--just in time for Christmas, too.  After he'd been nicely browned, he wouldn't even be recognizable to his own family and I'd have dinner for the next couple days._

Stop looking at me like that.  Jeez, some people just can't take a joke.

"So where do you live, Mike?"

"Downstairs.  With my father."  He squirmed uncomfortably.  "He's going to be mad at me.  I'm not supposed to leave the room without him."

"Do you know why not?"

"Nope."

I knew why.  The apartment complex had three big rules: no pets, no noise over twenty decibels between the hours of eight o'clock and seven-thirty, and no kids.  The little midgets were contraband at this place; no one under the age of seventeen was supposed to be in there for over four hours.  I guess that's why I'd been so surprised to see this kid with his head in the banister--I hadn't talked to or seen any little kids in something resembling their natural setting in a long while.  It made me wonder what kind of person his father was and how long they'd lived here without being caught.  It was admirable, I thought, but I was willing to bet that the other tenants would be super-pissed if they saw Mike running around.  Most of them were crabby old women with the same sense of humor as a rock.

I take that back.  I've known some very funny rocks, at least when compared to those old bats.

I wondered why I'd never seen Mike before now or why I'd never met his father.  I knew almost everyone in the whole building, with thanks to the complexes annual holiday party.  Attendance was mandatory (or so I'd always been told) and they were the most soporific things I'd ever attended.  A real sleeping draught; anyone with insomnia could go there for an hour and be cured in an instant.

Mike gave me a funny look after a minute of silence and I realized that it was my turn to play the conversationalist.  I squeezed more of the tube's contents into my hand and started lathering up the other side of his head.

"So what about your mom?  Where's she?"

"Somewhere else.  I see her on weekends sometimes."  He squirmed again.  "What's your name?"

"Depends on who's asking me.  Most people know me as Duo Maxwell."

"Okay.  Am I almost out, Mister McHell?"

I cringed at the awful mispronunciation of my last name but decided not to say anything about it.  Hey, if people on TV can live with names like Arnold Rimmer their entire life, I can be Mister McHell for a few hours.  Did you catch that old public television reference?  So sue me--I like to watch the really old shows that no one these days has ever even _heard of.  I swear that it's not humanly possible to hate old television shows._

All right, anyway, back to the story.  Instead of correcting Mike's bad pronunciation, I checked the viscosity of his head.  "Almost," I told him with a smile.  "Should only be five minutes or so now.  Maybe even less than that."

"Good.  My father will be mad if he wakes up and I'm not in the apartment."

"What time does he usually wake up?"

"I don't know," Mike said carefully.  "I can't tell time yet."

"Oh.  Okay.  Well, keep quiet a second or two while I figure out if you're slippery enough to get out of here.  Don't talk."  I pressed Mike's ears flat against his head and started to ease him out.  It was easier than I thought it would be.  "This may hurt a little," I warned him, "but it'll stop in a little bit.  I promise."

He whimpered as I pulled him out from between the bars of the banister and I frowned when I got to the point where his ears had to go through.  The moment of truth had arrived!

Well, to my surprise, Mike's head popped out rather easily once I got past the ears, which took a bit of work but was quite doable.  He looked rather surprised himself.  Sitting up, he rubbed his head, probably trying to get some of the slippery stuff off, and blinked at me.  He had very wide blue eyes and blonde hair.  Cute kid.

"Thank you."

"No problem," I said, grinning and getting to my feet.  "If you ever get stuck here again, you know who to yell for.  I'll be around eventually."

"I don't think I'm gonna do that again, though.  You want to come down and meet my dad?  He might let me give you a cookie.  As a thank-you."

"Sure."  I grinned.  "Just don't ruin my breakfast, okay?"

"All right."  He took my slimy hand in his and led me towards the elevator, obviously avoiding the stairs.  He obviously knew his way around this place--the elevator on this floor was kind of hidden in a corner and it took some doing to find, but he led me straight to it.  That made me wonder just how long his father had been hiding him here.  The idea of the guy actually hiding his son in a place like this interested me.  I wanted to meet this guy.  Okay, so I admit that the cookie was another reason for my cooperation, but I never turn down an offer of free food.  Besides, what exactly was Mike going to tell his dad about the stuff I'd lathered his head with?  I can't think of many parents who wouldn't wonder what their son had spread all over his head when he wasn't even supposed to be outside the apartment.  I had every intention of explaining it all to Mike's father first chance I got, before the midget could blurt something out as kids tend to do.  I was saving him from a lecture, or at least prolonging it, and it would alleviate my insatiable curiosity a little.

That's what I planned, anyway.  Blame it all on intrigue if you want, since that was definitely one of several ulterior motives, but it was half to help the kid out.  Really, it was.  Trust me once in a while, will you?

The door wasn't locked, which didn't exactly surprise me, and Mike turned the knob carefully, pushing the door open slowly as if that was going keep it from making any noise.  There wasn't any real reason for that caution, though, as a man, probably my age or a little older, was sitting at a table with his back to us.  I heard the rustling of a newspaper as the man set it down, acknowledging our presence.

"Michael's back," the man said, directing his comment to someone I couldn't see who was still in the bedroom.  "I told you that he wasn't hiding in the closet."  There was no answer, which obviously didn't phase the man, and he started talking to Mike in a soft voice.  "Where have you been, Michael?  And who's your friend?"  His voice grated on me for some reason.  I was more than a little brain dead at the time, which probably didn't help matters much, but I had the weird feeling that I really should have known this guy right off the bat.  I just couldn't place him.

"I got stuck in the stairs.  Mister McHell helped me get out.  He's very nice and funny; can I give him a cookie?"

"May you give him a cookie.  Not can."

"Okay.  _May_ I give Mister McHell a cookie?"

"If you want."  The man turned around to face me as Mike went over to the counter and reached up for an ornate cookie jar.  I gasped when I saw his face.  He looked just as surprised to see me and his coffee mug fell to the floor, spilling the brown sludge all over the carpet.  I cringed; that was going to stain and he was going to get it from the landlord if that old bastard saw the spot.

"Christ!  Heero, is that you?"

"Duo?" he asked with a startled look on his face.  His voice was practically emotionless, void of the disbelief I must have projected so freely.  I'd half-expected that.  "What are you doing here?"

I pointed at Mike.  "Free food.  What are _you_ doing here?"

"I live here."  Heero crossed his arms over his chest and frowned at me before his attention was averted to Michael, who dropped the jar on the floor.  It must have been plastic or something, since it didn't break, but it did make a loud noise when it hit the ground.  He blinked at the boy.  "What's that all over your head?"

"Mister McHell--"

Heero interrupted him.  "Mister Maxwell."

"Mister Mackell used it to get me unstuck.  It was cold and icky and came out of a tube.  And it smells really funny."  He made a face, picking the jar up and prying open the lid.  "It smells a little bit like cherries."  He fished a cookie out of the jar and handed it to me.  I took it carefully; this kid was in the same house as Heero Yuy, mister "I-despise-sugar" himself.  Who was to say the things weren't laced with arsenic or something?

Heero reached over and wiped a little of the stuff off Mike's head with his finger and inspected it for a moment before looking up at me.  "What is it?"

"Uh," I informed him, dumbly.  God, I don't think I've blushed that much in my life.  I just _knew what he thought it was and I had a dank feeling in my stomach that he wasn't going to like it when I told him that he was probably right.  It took me a second to get my voice back and correct my quietly grunted statement.  "It's just something I had lying around.  Nothing dangerous or anything, really.  You might want to give him a bath or something, though.  Maybe two or three.  He's all slimy."_

"I noticed," Heero remarked dryly.  "What _is it?"  He had that look in his eyes, the one I hadn't seen in years.  The one that said 'this had __better not be what I think it is or you're really going to get it, Maxwell.'  You know, the scary look.  The one that threatened me with a slow, violent, and probably painful death.  Seeing Mike sneak a cookie of his own and stuff it in his mouth with a cautious glance in Heero direction, I took a bite out of my own cookie, suddenly and privately wishing that it __was laced with arsenic._

It was oatmeal.  That's almost as bad.

"Like I said, it doesn't matter," I said with a shrug, swallowing the cookie.  "See you, Heero.  Bye Mike, thanks for the cookie.  Give my regards to your mom, okay?"

Mike nodded.  "'Kay."

That said and done, I retreated to the door and let myself out, heading back up to my apartment at the speed of light so I could wash my hands, finish eating my cookie, and ride the bus to work in mortified, stupefied, and horrified silence.

**--to be continued--**


	2. Playtime

CAUGHT BETWEEN THE BANISTER

Part Two: Playtime

Disclaimer: don't own them.  Don't want them.  Don't need them.  So there.  Thanks go out to Endymion, Blue Dragon, and Crimson Knight for reading and telling me what they thought.  I'd also like to thank Hobson for the banister idea, Leilla for being such a great sport and for the constant inspiration she provided, and TKMaxwell777, who didn't like Duo referring to Christ so much but did a beta which was both wonderful and quick.  Thanks, everyone.

**Warnings/Rating: allusions to yaoi/shonen ai in this part.  My usual insanity.  Fun stuff like that.  This part is rated PG for a few four-letter words.**

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Well, that's the beginning of my sad story.  For those of you just tuning in, here's a recap--try not to make me have to do it again, all right?  I was about to leave for work one morning when I caught sight of some midget kid with his head stuck between the banister railings and decided to stop and help him out.  His name turned out to be Michael, Mike for short, and he was an interesting conversationalist.  The two of us talked for awhile while I got him out of that little situation and I learned that he lived with his dad in the same apartment complex as I did--which is supposed to be a no pets, noise, or kids area.

I got Mike out of the banister after a little while and he took me downstairs to get a thank-you cookie.  So who do I run into while I'm there but Heero Yuy himself, who I haven't seen in probably over four years!  Bastard didn't even have the decency to let me know he was living in my complex, much less tell me that he'd had a son.  Seems way too coincidental that the two of us ended up living in the same building only one floor apart, to be honest.  I thought about that after my embarrassing meeting with Heero and realized that the only thing separating our apartments was a layer or two of plywood, some wiring, and a bit of pink insulation.  And I never knew!  It was just too screwy. How had Mike managed to stay alive for so long as Soldier-boy's kid?

Right, that's about it for the recap and insightful musings.  Let's get back to the story, okay?

I spent most of the morning at work, where I sat at my desk and doodled while I thought about things.  The amazing thing about that is that I get paid for doing it every day; it kind of makes you wonder where your tax dollars are going and all. I don't pay taxes, myself.  Being a war veteran has its advantages, I guess, even if you do have to live with all the shitty memories and stuff.  Memories like my final moments with my war buddies--the Gundam pilots themselves.

Those weren't exactly pleasant good-byes, really, though I can honestly say that I've been through worse.  It was fairly hard to say goodbye to Wufei, despite knowing that I was going to be keeping in touch with him.  Wu-bear and I had our differences, sure, but the two of us got along fairly well.  We weren't cut from the same cloth, exactly.  It was more like we'd been cut with a similar pattern in mind and with the same pair of scissors, really, but we were good friends.  Nothing more than that, of course.  I don't know about Wufei, but I wasn't ready for a serious relationship of any sort back then, though I definitely tried damn hard to get into one, and that camaraderie we shared early on would never have been able to develop anywhere past plain and simple friendship.  We still keep in touch via email, you know.  We get together every once in a while and pal around, going to coffee shops all around the city and discussing things like politics and philosophy and basic buddy stuff, just like the old days.  It's fun.

He _still_ hates it when I call him Wu-bear.

It was a little easier to say goodbye to Quatre and Trowa.  I never really got to know Trowa, to be honest with you, but Quatre sure did.  They really hit it off, I think, back when they first met--I remember Quatre telling me once, rather wistfully, that he'd be the luckiest man alive if only Trowa was a girl.  Poor Quatre; he really was infatuated with the guy.  I can't help but wonder if they ever worked it out, really, since it was kind of obvious that Trowa was coming close to cracking.  The two of them may not have been gay or anything, but sometimes love transcends gender and I think that their mutual adoration for each other may have been one of those cases.

Quatre and I were friends, sure, and we got along well enough.  Not as well as I got along with Wufei, but that was reasonable.  I couldn't shake the grudge I felt towards him because of his wealth--I still have a problem with people who have a lot of money, really.  My guess is that the feeling stems from childhood; I never had any money growing up on L2 and none of the wealthy people who hung around seemed to give a damn about me.  If I remember right, most of them told me--often to my face--that it would be best for the lot of us orphan kids to be wiped off the colony.  That hurt like hell back then, especially when it was accompanied by a kick in the seat of the pants or a slap across the face, and it was all just because I'd been born.  Can you blame me for being a little suspicious of Quatre at first?  He'd grown up with everything I'd never had: money, a family, everything he could ever want (except Trowa, of course, but that's a different story) while I begged on the streets for loose change.  Didn't seem fair back then.  Doesn't seem all that fair now, either.

I guess it was my envy of Quatre that kept me from getting too close to him.  Thankfully, it was that same envy that kept me from hurting too much when it was finally time to say goodbye.

Heero, believe it or not, was the hardest to say goodbye to.  And it wasn't just because I didn't really speak Japanese all that well back then either, although that was definitely a complication.  He spoke English like a native anyway, so what did it matter?  The problem with our differing vernaculars was simply this: he didn't give a damn about anything I said, no matter what language I tried to say it in.  Hell, I could have screamed it in banshee and he wouldn't have looked at me.

God, it's hard to believe that it was all so long ago that it all happened!  Four years, maybe more, since I'd managed to drag myself out of that hellhole I called my life. Four fucking years, all filled with pieces of memories and shattered bits of my soul, my heart, and who knows what the hell else.  And, despite all those years, I can still remember my little spat with Heero as if it had all happened just yesterday.

Jeez, it's like rubbing salt in the wound all over again.  Who'd have thought that it would hurt so much just to _remember_ something?  Oh well; at least there's an easy way to temporarily fix that: stop trying to remember.

What were you expecting?  Detailed information about my tragic private life? Get real; I'm not telling you squat unless you pay me, and even then it would depend entirely on the amount.

Right, so there I was, at work, sitting at my desk and doodling.  I do that a lot, now that I think about it, but I don't want to go into a long rambling spiel about taxes and floating cat heads or whatever like I did last time, so we'll just ignore that.  It was around this time when my boss came in, all smiles and jeers, and that puzzled me.  The dude was a pompous twit; he wouldn't have been seen in my little corner of the building unless he was being threatened with guns, knives, nooses, and a flaming mob, complete with pitchforks, and even then it would require a kick in the seat of his pants.  So was it any wonder that the first thing I did was look around for the mob?  He didn't seem to understand why I was so puzzled either, now that I think about it.  He probably figured I was trying to display my flamingly homosexual nature or something.  Which reminds me--here's a tip for future job interviews.  When they ask you for your marital status, never--and I mean _never_--bat your eyes, wink, and tell them that you're currently selling your body for extra cash and they're welcome to try you out.  It'll haunt you forever.

Right.  So where was I, exactly?  Oh, my boss!  That's right.  Sorry about that.

All right, so Señor Asno, as I've aptly nicknamed him, was in my office, smiling from ear to ear with a box in his hands.  That wasn't the bad part, though--it was that smile.  It looked really out of place, for one thing, and it made him look like he was genuinely happy, and anyone who has someone like Señor Asno as a boss knows that a genuinely happy smile usually means that something is terribly, horribly, devastatingly wrong.  It's the smile your old elementary school principal, who, ironically, despised kids with a vengeance, might have on their face just before they tell you that your parents have died in a car accident.  You know, one of those sadistic, morbid, and all around creepy smiles that haunt your dreams for days afterwards.

Yeah, you know what I'm talking about.

First thing I thought when I saw that smile was that someone had died, except I realized that the only person whose death would actually affect me at all would be Wufei's.  He promised me years ago, however, that in the event of his untimely demise he would have his right hand sent to me in a jar of formaldehyde and that would be the only notice I got.  I don't deal well with death, really, and I'd rather get to keep a memento of my friend than watch him be burned on a funeral pyre--his preferred means of disposal.  Wu-bear understood me perfectly when I said that and made me promise to send him my braid if I ever died without telling him first, just so he could have the satisfaction of taking it away from me.  I consequently have no intention of kicking the bucket before Wufei does.  I spent years growing this baby--I'm definitely not letting it go just because I'm inconvenienced by death.

So, staring at Señor Asno with a look of horrified anticipation, I cleared my throat and set down my pen, making a feeble attempt to hide my doodles.  "May I help you, sir?"

"Clear your desk."  He slammed the box down on the desktop and his sadistic grin widened.

The not-so-subtle message he gave me was suddenly painfully clear.  "I'm being fired?" I asked, astounded.  "Why?"

"I'm afraid that we've had to let several employees go due to the lagging economic situation."

"Bull.  Our economy is doing great--taxes are low, stocks are up, and gas prices are at a record high.  Either the television has been lying to me, which I doubt, given that this company is the one getting the newscasters all that information in the first place, or you're just trying to throw a bunch of shit in my face so you can pink slip me without getting busted."

"An interesting hypothesis, Mister Maxwell, but I'm afraid it is no longer of my concern.  Pack your things and disappear," he said with a smirk.  I growled at him.  If I hadn't needed the money so badly I swear that I would have been overjoyed, but this was just going to really botch things up in my life.  The only benefit was that I wouldn't see Señor Asno again, but even that tiny glimmer of light was squashed by the sense of doom that came with knowing that I was about three days behind on my rent money and didn't have the cash to pay the landlord.

"You're a real jerk, you know that?"

"Yes, Mister Maxwell; I actually pride myself in that fact."  He patted my shoulder congenially, stopping only when I shook him off.  "Don't worry.  There are plenty of jobs out there for young people such as you.  I'm sure that some of the local clubs and bars will be looking for people with your... talents."

I snorted.  Didn't it just figure or what?  Not only did this guy give me the pink slip for no apparent reason but he was calling me a whore, too!  The bastard had some nerve, let me tell you.  Christ, if I still had my old collection of artillery he'd have been leaving the building with a bullet through his head and a knife in his gut, all while lying recumbent on a stretcher.

All right, I admit that I have a bit of a short fuse and a bad temper.  But you can't tell me that this asshole didn't deserve it!  It might have been a _little_ harsh, I'll grant you, but come on!  Them's fighting words!  Give me a break!

Fine, fine, whatever.  I'll stop, if that will make you shut up.  Back to the story.

Not even putting up much of a fight, I started packing all my stuff into that tiny box, grumbling interesting words and phrases under my breath.  Señor Asno retreated pretty much immediately after I started mumbling something about ramming a stapler down his throat, so I got to finish my packing more or less on my own.  It's really amazing what a few threats of unnecessary violence can do, isn't it?

I got back to my apartment complex only an hour later, around noon, almost six hours earlier than usual, but I didn't go inside for a long while, just sat on a bench outside, box in my lap, and staring at nothing in particular.  I don't know how long I was out there before someone stopped in front of me, blocking my line of vision.  I blinked for a second or two until my eyes focused again and frowned, puzzled for a moment.

"Mike?"

"Mister Mackell?"

I smiled at the blonde boy.  "Close enough.  What are you doing out here?"

"I'm taking a walk," he told me simply, shrugging his tiny shoulders.  He'd apparently bathed since I'd seen him last; the slippery crap wasn't on his head anymore and his hair looked kind of damp.  That had been three, maybe four, hours ago, though, so why was his hair wet?  Exactly how many baths did the kid have to take to get all that stuff off?

"With your dad?" I asked, looking around for someone.  The street was empty, except for an old woman standing on the corner with an umbrella hooked at her elbow.  I looked up at the computerized sky; it was clear as could be.  What did she think she was doing with that umbrella?

He nodded.  "He was going to the store and took me with him but the bus stopped too soon and we got off and decided to walk home.  We were racing.  I think I beat him, though," he said listlessly, searching momentarily in the direction from which he had come.  I tried to imagine Heero playing a game like that with a kid but couldn't even begin to picture it.  I also had a hard time thinking of him letting the kid win, either.  Heero has always been one of those people who has to be the best at everything, or so I thought.  Of course, I hadn't ever thought of him living with a kid and not killing the midget out of pure annoyance, either.  Had he really changed all that much?  It was hard to believe.

"I'm sure he'll be here soon."

"Prob'ly.  He always catches up sooner or later.  We go to the store every day except Saturday's and Sunday's and he sometimes let's me carry stuff, like milk," Mike told me, making a face.  "I don't like milk.  Do you?"

"I like it with chocolate.  And when I dunk cookies in it."

"I've never done that.  My father says that it's bad to mix food together and he doesn't let me have many cookies anyway.  He says that it's not good for me to eat a lot of sugar because it'll make my teeth fall out."  He looked up at me.  "Is that true?"

I shrugged.  "Mine haven't fallen out yet."  I grinned at him.  "How old are you, Mike?"

"Five, but I'll be six really soon."

"How soon?" I asked.  Mike just shrugged, making me grin.  He really was quite the kid--one second he would be as quiet as anything and the next he'd be even more garrulous than I.  He was pretty cool, so far as little kids go.

"Ten and a half months."

I looked over to my left, where Heero was standing, arms wrapped around two large paper bags, and somehow managed to pull off a smile.  "Soon enough, I guess.  You want help with that?"

"You've got your own things to carry," he said shortly, eyes looking at the box in my lap for a brief moment or two.  "Michael can help."

Mike rushed over to take one of the bags from Heero, who handed him the one that was obviously lighter, after taking out a few things that must have weighed it down considerably.  It looked like Mike was having a tough time with the bag anyway and it made me smile to watch him struggle earnestly to carry the bag up the steps. He was definitely trying to show off for someone.  Me?  Heero?  It didn't matter; it was cute.

"Then I can at least open the door for you two," I said, getting up and hoisting the box in one hand as I reached over Mike's head to grasp the handle.  Mike thanked me as he went through, heading for the elevator and Heero brushed past me without a word.  I joined them in the elevator.

Christ, stop giving me that awful look!  It's not like I was planning to abduct Mike or anything, nor was I trying to stalk them; if you remember, my floor was just one above their own.  Why take the stairs just to avoid them when I could hitch a ride on the creaky elevator?

Mike set down his bag as soon as the elevator door shut and tugged on the leg of Heero's jeans.  "Can Mister Mackell--"

"Maxwell," Heero corrected without even really thinking about it.  That made me smile; it's kind of funny to see something like that, especially from Heero.

"Can Mister McWell come over and play for a little while?" Mike asked.  I flushed.  Jeez, I'd just met the kid that morning and already I'd been adopted as a play-buddy?  Don't get me wrong--I definitely wasn't complaining, given that I absolutely love kids and Mike was plain adorable, it just struck me as different.  I felt like I was imposing on their little improvised family life, something I'm almost positive Heero didn't appreciate, given the hostility when the two of us had parted ways all those years ago, and I wasn't sure I liked pissing Heero off.  Things were uncomfortable enough between the two of us; it had been a lot better when we hadn't even been aware that we lived in the same building.  Besides, it seemed as though Heero had put a lot of work into making sure no one found out that Mike was living there.  Heero only took the kid out during regular nine to five work hours, for Christ's sake, which was actually pretty damn smart of him, considering, but I could guarantee that it wasn't doing Mike any good.  Poor kid probably didn't have a whole lot of friends.

Heero shot a look my way and made a grunting noise that gave the impression of a negative answer.  Mike deflated.  Not literally, of course, though that would be pretty damn creepy, but he kind of drooped.  Yeah, that's the word for it--he drooped, kind of wilted a little.  He looked really disappointed.  "Oh," he said glumly.  "Okay."

I decided to play devil's advocate for a minute or two, really just to cheer the kid up.  "He can play at my apartment, if that's any better," I offered.  Heero frowned at me, which almost made me regret making the offer, but Mike perked up.  He looked at Heero hopefully.

"May I?"

Heero didn't respond for a long while, but when the elevator doors opened on his floor, he shrugged, taking the bag Mike had been carrying in his arms and walking out.  "Fine.  Don't break anything and be back before three o'clock."

The doors closed behind Heero and Mike cheered, pumping his fist up in the air.  "Yeah!  We're going to have the _best_ time, Mister McWell!"

"Just call me Duo, Mike."

"Okay.  We're going to have the _best_ time, Duo!" he said, repeating himself.  I grinned at him as we stepped out of the elevator.  Who would have thought that spending three hours in my apartment was such a big deal?

I opened the door of my apartment and ushered him inside, locking the door behind me and setting my box on the floor next to the couch.  "So what do you want to do?"

"You have a big apartment," Mike remarked, looking around and ignoring my question.  I peered at the familiar surroundings and shrugged.

"Not really.  There's just not a lot of furniture in here."  That was true.  I've never really seen the point of having a lot of chairs and things.  All I had in the apartment was a futon that folded out into a bed over in the guestroom, a cot in the main bedroom, a couch, a table, two chairs, and three of those huge beanbag things, which I had stuffed in my closet.  I pulled them out when I needed them.  I had an old black and white television, too, but I didn't use it much.  It was plugged into the wall in the bathroom, which probably wasn't all that smart, now that I think of it.  I also had a micro-fridge, but it was tiny and didn't matter much.  The whole place wasn't much to speak of, honestly, but it was enough for me and that was all that mattered, considering that I lived alone. Wufei, when he came over, would complain that the beanbag chairs weren't good for his health, but I found that more amusing than anything else.

Mike looked at me.  "Can we play cops and robbers?  My father never lets me play it because he says it'll make a lot of noise and that's a bad thing to do."

"All right; we can play that.  Do you want to be the cop or the robber?"

"The robber--he's the bad guy with a gun," Mike told me, making sure I understood that he wanted to be the bad guy.

"So I get to be the cop?  The good guy?"

"Ahuh.  You can have a gun, too.  Just point your finger like this."  Mike demonstrated for me, pointing his makeshift weapon at me.  "Bang!  Got you!"

"Hey, no fair!  We haven't even started playing yet!"

"So what?"

"So what?" I repeated, pretending to be alarmed.  "I'll show you 'so what'!" I said, lunging at him.  "It's time for some tickle torture!"

He shrieked with glee, rolling around on the floor while I tickled him until he cried for mercy a few shrill minutes later.  Playing with Mike was a lot of fun and the hours passed by quickly.  I didn't even notice when three o'clock came and went and didn't care when we accidentally dropped a plate on the floor and it shattered into about a trillion pieces.

That's another thing I've noticed over the years.  When a plate breaks it doesn't just make a few clean breaks and get happily swept away.  It would be easy to pick up broken china if it only broke into three big pieces.  But no, it has to burst into as many tiny pieces as it can and go _everywhere_, just to piss people off.  There's no reason for that, so far as I can see, except for the imminent purpose of being an annoyance.  And you know what I hate the most about it?  Microscopic pieces turn up years later, after a million times of vacuuming and sweeping.  They haunt you until the day you die--or at least until the day you move out.

So what was I talking about?  Oh, playing with Mike, that's right.

Okay, so we didn't really notice what time it was until I accidentally knocked over my clock radio and managed to catch a glimpse of the red numbers.  I got the clock radio for Christmas a few years back, from Wufei, who knew all too well that I'd been on a James Bond kick for awhile and that every time I looked at that clock I would think of Agent 007 disabling those bombs.  I had creepy dreams about saving the world from certain doom for a long while after I was presented with that gift...  Do you know how long they've been making James Bond movies?  Since before the colonies went up, can you believe that!  I guess some things just never get old.  Or that people really like things they know, and trust me, by now people _know about James Bond._

Anyway, as I was saying.  The numbers on the clock spelled out the magic number of three forty-five in glowing symbols of doom and I had to stop myself from cursing.  I didn't know just how much Heero had changed over the years, but back when I knew him he had been a stickler for time and punctuality.  This wasn't going to be fun.

"Mike, it's time to get going.  Your dad's probably wondering where we are right about now and we don't want to him to come looking for you."

He got to his feet, frowning.  "It's time to go already?"

"Afraid so.  Come on, let's get you home before your dad freaks out."

Mike giggled at that image.  "I don't think I've ever seen him freak out before.  Have you?"

"Once," I admitted carefully.  I really did have to be careful about what I said, too.  I didn't want him to be asking when and how I'd seen Heero freak, did I?  If Mike decided to play parrot, I would have a hell of a lot of explaining to do.  "A long, long time ago.  And, to be honest, I don't think I ever want to see it again.  So let's go, okay?"

"Okay."  He took my hand and we left my apartment and headed down for the elevator.  I didn't even lock my door; why bother?  It's not like I had anything to steal but my James Bond Bomb Clock, and any thief was more than welcome to that.  It would give me an excuse to get a different clock, anyway, and I would definitely count that as a blessing.

The trip down to Heero's apartment took a little bit longer than usual because we had to wait for the elevator and then got the third degree from one of my crabby old neighbors.  I warded her off by explaining that Mike was just visiting me for a little while and I was going to be taking him home now.  It wasn't a lie, really, it was just kind of telling her the exact truth and skipping over all of the important bits.  Those insignificant delays put us in front of Heero's door at almost exactly three fifty-eight.

Mike hummed a tune as he opened the door and led me inside.  "Dad?" he called out.  No one answered his call so he shrugged and went over to the table.

I frowned, looking around.  "Where is he?"

"He might have gone without me," Mike said vaguely, picking something up off the table and looking at it funny.  "To the train station."

"Why would he go there?"

"To take my mother home," he told me.  "Do you know what this says?" he asked, handing me the paper.  "My father tried to teach me how to read a little while ago but I didn't really figure it out.  He said that was okay, though."

"Yeah, I can read it."  I squinted at it, trying to read Heero's handwriting, which was still as varied and unpredictable as I remembered it being.  He'd done that for a reason, I remembered, since he could write extremely well if we wanted to, but the purpose escaped me.  I'd lose a lot sleep trying to remember it later.  The note was short and brief, reminding me of the mission reports Heero always used to fill out.  It read: 'You were late.  Am taking Stacey home.  Watch Michael until I return.  Stay here.'  Nothing very exciting.  I read it aloud for Mike.

"Oh," he said when I'd finished.  "So can we play some more?"

"Quietly, I guess.  Who's Stacey?" I asked as I followed him to the closet, where he pulled out a shoebox full of toy trains and cars.  Mike pulled out a little police car and started to make it zoom across the floor, pushing it along.  He made little "whee-whee-whee" sounds, like an alarm, as he moved it.

Mike shrugged.  "My mom.  She was staying with us yesterday and today and now my father is taking her home so I won't have to see her until next month."

"So she was here this morning?"  That explained one mystery, at least.  The person Heero had been speaking to when I'd brought Mike home must have been the kid's mother, who'd been visiting them for a few days.

"Ahuh."

"Okay."  Talking about his mother obviously bothered him, so I let the subject drop.  I couldn't help but wonder, though, what the deal was.  Kids usually love their mothers to death, don't they?  Especially around Mike's age, what with the Oedipus Complex and all that, right?

I'd be losing sleep thinking about that, too.

I sorted through the shoebox until I found a little red convertible.  Mike giggled when I made the convertible run into a telephone pole and started to talk in a high, squeaky voice.  The dialog mostly consisted of "help, help, save me," but it was enough to keep both our minds off of things.  After safely depositing my convertible-person in jail for both speeding and a bank-robbery (his logic, not mine.  I run into a pole and he decides I've committed all sorts of crimes; next thing he'd be giving me the death penalty for murder), Mike switched to the fire-truck and I pretended to be a worried civilian with a cat stuck in a tree.  He liked that one even more.

After about sixteen mock rescues and emergencies (and one high-speed car chase), the door opened and Heero came in, footfalls making barely a sound.  He nudged a few toy cars out of the way with his foot before he opened the closet and hung up his jacket, then crossed his arms and looked down at the two of us.  Mike looked up with wide blue eyes.

"Hi," he said cheerfully, smiling at his father.  Then, without another word, he went back to his toy ambulance.  "Whee-ooo, whee-ooo!  Don't worry, I'll save you!"

The corners of Heero's mouth turned up slightly at that and I suppressed a grin of triumph--even Heero had thought Mike was being pretty damn cute.  Maybe he had a trace of human blood in him after all.  "It looks like you two have been having fun," he remarked with a bit more feeling than I was used to hearing from him.  It sounded as though he was having a good day.

"Ahuh," Mike said as he put his ambulance back in the shoebox without even bothering to save Dave the Daring Duckling (the shoebox had a few small stuffed animals in it, too) from the perils of a broken leg.  Playtime was obviously over.

"Good.  Go wash up."  As Mike scampered off to the nearest sink, Heero frowned at me.  "You were late getting him home."

I shrugged.  "Not by much, really.  We just lost track of time is all."

His eyes narrowed a bit, giving me the impression that he had waited a long while before taking off with Stacey, but he didn't say anything about that.  "I need to ask a favor."

Whoa, talk about an attitude change.  A second ago he'd been all spiteful and accusatory; now he was practically on his knees begging me to help him.

All right, you caught me.  I'm exaggerating a little bit, you're right, but the point stays the same.  He switched from being anal retentive, over protective and downright irritated to being the congenial good neighbor, asking me for favors and cups of sugar, in less than an instant.  Zero to sixty in point five seconds.  The whole favor thing was outrageous to consider--especially given our past history and the not-so-friendly things that had passed between us so many years ago.  And that's not even _mentioning_ the idle threats, general blackmail, and suspicious glances that passed between us every damn day back then.  Considering that the only time he'd ever helped me out was by offering to shoot me, I was a little bit wary of giving him a hand with much of anything.  You have _no_ idea how tempted I was just to blow him off and walk away before he could even register what was going on.  I didn't even want to hear what the favor _was_.

Well, being the overall nice guy that I am, I decided to hear him out.  Just this once.

"Okay," I said, grinning.  "Shoot."

"I have to go out of town for business and someone needs to watch Michael.  He gets along with you fairly well and I would have to be stupid to leave him with his mother."

Jeez, if he hated the woman so much, why did he have her stay at his apartment once every month?  "Bad divorce?"

"No.  She's mentally unstable."

"Oh."

"It would only be for three, maybe four, days.  You would have to stay here, in this apartment, and make sure Michael stayed fairly quiet."  He frowned at my lack of response.  "I'd be willing to pay you for the inconvenience."

Ka-ching!  The magic words!

Don't look at me like that.  I was going to do it anyway, you know.  Mike was an addictive little bugger and it wasn't like I had to go to work or anything in any case.  I just wanted to see Heero sweat a little.  Besides, getting money only sweetened the deal.  Without a job I was going to be hard-pressed to pay my rent and, when things get tight, every little bit counts.  Pretty much everyone knows that.  This was a good deal--I'd get paid for playing with my favorite munchkin and for making sure no one stole the apartment, and, when Mike was asleep, I could go through the want ads and find myself a new job.  It would work out.

"You've got a deal."

"Good.  I leave tomorrow at five o'clock.  Get here around four."

And so, with my future somewhat secure and a grin plastered on my face, I said goodbye to Mike and went back upstairs, to my own apartment, where I spent the rest of the night watching R-rated movies and debating whether or not I should call Wufei.

**--to be continued--**


	3. Babysitting

CAUGHT BETWEEN THE BANISTER

Part Three: Babysitting

Disclaimer: don't own them.  Don't want them.  Don't need them.  I'll tell you if anything changes, but don't hold your breath.  Wouldn't want you to pass out or anything now, would we?  Anyway, this part is written with thanks to TKMaxwell777, who is the best beta ever, and to Leilla, Endymion, and Abby, who sort of laughed when I told them what I was planning.  I'd also like to thank my brothers Dave and Andy, just because they stayed out of my way.  For the most part, at least.  The whole banister concept is with thanks to Michael Hobson, who had no idea that I was actually listening at the time.

**Warnings/Rating: Not much here to speak of.  There are one or two psychological references, if you can catch them.  Some language issues.  I used to Lord's name in vain a few times, but the only person to complain about that so far is TK.  My usual insanity.  Fun stuff like that.  This part is rated PG for a few four-letter words.  That's all.  This story is not meant to offend, it is meant to amuse.  If it does offend you, that's your own damn problem.  Bugger off.**

---

I knocked on Heero's apartment door at exactly three forty-five the next afternoon, a little bit earlier than Heero had asked me to arrive.  I don't know why I bothered, honestly.  Maybe it was to prove that I really _could_ do something right for a change, instead of bumbling through missions, showing up late, and making a fool of myself.  It probably wouldn't even make a difference to him anyway; Heero would only grunt at me and ignore my spasm of punctuality and responsibility so he could focus on all of my mistakes.  Not even Heero could change _that_ much; the pretentious bastard would never be able to admit I wasn't all bad.  He never wanted to look on the good side of things.  Or on the good side of people.

Mike opened the door, standing on tiptoe to reach the doorknob and lock.  He grinned when he saw me.  "Hi, Duo!"

"Hey," I replied, grinning and looking around the apartment.  Have I mentioned that Heero had a damn nice apartment?  The basic layout was more or less the same as mine, but whereas mine was sparse, his was full of furniture.  Everything matched, too.  The floor was covered in a brown carpet and the room itself contained a dark brown couch and a matching recliner.  There was a wooden end table on one side of the couch and the whole ensemble was set up in a kind of 'V' shape.  There was an ornate lamp on the end table.  There was a big TV against on wall, positioned so that both the couch and recliner had a clear view of it.  The whole bit was pretty nice, really.  "Where's your father?"

"Trying to finish packing.  He told me not to go in there while he was doing it because I might get hurt or something, so I'm playing cars."  He held up a tiny blue pickup truck, offering it to me.  "You want to play with me?"

"In a bit.  I've got to talk with your dad for a few minutes or so.  That okay?"

"Ahuh."  Mike pointed to the closed door of the bedroom.  "He's in there.  You might want to knock first or he might shoot you," he said, frowning.  "He doesn't look and see who's standing there before he aims the gun."

Same old Heero.  A chill ran down my spine.  He was the father of a five-year-old boy and he still hadn't managed to shake that "shoot first, talk later" attitude?  Even _I used to look at who was standing there before I brandished a weapon, and Wufei, too!  Quatre and Trowa never really bothered either way, if I remember right, but Heero!  Heero, even with Mike there, hadn't broken the habit, and that scared the hell out of me.  I just knew that someday I was going to hear a gun go off a floor below my apartment and wouldn't be able to do anything but pray._

Thinking back on that, I'm hoping it wasn't a premonition of some kind.  Not only would that just be damn creepy, it would scare the hell out of me, too.

I knocked boldly on the door before I walked in, to alert him of my presence.  Heero, sitting on the floor beside the bed, didn't look up from the gun he was carefully loading, but he grunted when I came in.  That seemed to be a good sign.  I looked at the artillery spread all over the bed and at the open suitcase on the floor, already half-full of ammunition, weapons, and spare socks.  I frowned.

"What kind of business trip are you going on, anyway?"

"It's a pleasure trip.  I lied," he said vaguely, a note of irritation in his voice.  "It's just a business trip.  That's all you need to know."  He finished loading the gun and raised it to eye level, squinting a bit.  There was a tense silence on my part, mostly given the fact that the gun was aimed at my chest.  After a moment or two he lowered it again.  "Sights are off," he said quietly, to himself.

I frowned again, trying to get my mind back on track.  He wasn't going to shoot me, really; someone had to watch Mike, after all.  There was no reason for me to be sweating bullets.  Of course not.  "Exactly what do you do for a living?"

"It's none of your business.  How would you like it if I asked why you've been fired from six jobs in the past two years?"

"I'd be too busy wondering how the hell you'd know something like that to bother thinking about it.  Have you been stalking me or something?" I asked, narrowing my eyes.  He snorted.

"Why would I want to do that?  It would be a waste of time, effort, and money.  I have other things to be doing.  Better things."  He fiddled with something on the top of the gun.

"Name one."

He shot me a cold look.  "Do the names Stacey and Michael mean anything to you?"

Oh yeah.  His family.  Yeah, that probably ranked pretty high on his list of better things to do than stalk me.  "So how did you know?"

He shrugged.  "Old habits die hard.  I did a background check on you yesterday, while Michael was at your apartment.  Do you honestly think I would have you watch him without checking your records?  I had to make sure I wasn't leaving the boy with a criminal or an ex-convict."  He frowned and checked the sights on the gun as he spoke.  "You've been careless; you've left a digital trail."

"It's not like I'm in hiding or anything.  Who gives a damn if a master computer hacker can track down my life story?  Definitely not me."

He grunted, clicking the safety on the gun and setting it carefully in the suitcase before he reached over the bed to pick up another weapon, ignoring me again.  I sighed.

"Why do Mike and I have to stay in this apartment, anyway?  Wouldn't it be just as easy to let him stay at my place while you're gone?"

Heero frowned.  "The apartment to the right of this one is empty and the one on the left is occupied only by a deaf woman.  It allows for a bit of leeway and for me to keep Michael here.  It is a rare child who can be totally quiet all of the time."

"Oh."  I sat on the floor, back resting against the wall.  "Why bother hiding him here, anyway?  Wouldn't it be easier to find an apartment complex that lets you keep kids around or to just buy a house or something?  Then you wouldn't have to keep him secret or anything."  And, I added silently, I wouldn't have had to meet you again.

"It's necessary," he said shortly.  I had the feeling he wouldn't elaborate on that, so I just shrugged.  Maybe I could worm it out of Mike later, if he knew.

"Whatever.  Am I allowed to feed him?"

"There's food in the refrigerator if you want to cook and money next to the microwave, probably hidden under the clay ashtray Michael made a few weeks ago."  He looked at the gun in his hands, clicking on the safety with a frown.  "I'll need to reconfigure this one all over again," he murmured to himself.  He tucked it into the back of his jeans.

I looked around at the arsenal he had spread out all over his room.  "Does Mike know you have all this stuff?  Does the landlord?"

Heero grunted, not answering my question at all, and got to his feet, sweeping the rest of the stuff he had decided _not_ to take into a box which was resting at the foot of the bed.  He shoved the box into a closet.  Then, taking out some clothes, he tossed them into the suitcase, not even bothering to fold them.  Wherever he was going, he wasn't going to have to be concerned by wrinkled clothing, that was for sure.  He'd have a hell of a time getting through customs, though.

"I left a list of important phone numbers on the table, in case you need them," he said.  "It's a short list; the only numbers are the ones for the doctor, the hospital, the local pizza place, Stacey's number, and the number to my portable phone.  Don't call them unless someone is dying or something exploded."

"What if we want pizza?"

He ignored that, too.  I'll admit it was a stupid question, but he was being a bit of a jerk anyway, so why not ask ridiculous things?  It wasn't like he was going to bother answering them.  "Michael goes to bed at eight o'clock every night--no exceptions.  He'll probably wake up before you do, but most days he'll just watch the television until you get up.  If he has a nightmare he will wake you up and you'll have to read him stories until he falls back asleep.  He'll have a pile of picture books with him and you'll probably get through about half of them before he nods off.  Don't let him use the phone and don't give him too much sugar.  He's allowed to get into the sweets once a day--if he's been good.  Make him drink a glass of milk every day."

There was no way I was going to remember all this.

"You can sleep in my room if  you want--the sheets were just changed this afternoon.  Michael's bedroom is over to the right; you can't miss it unless you actually attempt to.  The layout of the apartment should be fairly similar to yours, so I expect you know where the closets and washrooms are.  Make sure he bathes every other day--at least.  He will go for weeks without cleaning if you let him."

"Okay.  Sure.  I'll keep that in mind."  I'd already forgotten virtually everything he'd just told me, except for the bits about the phone numbers and having to sleep in his room.  That was going to make for some rough nights; I could tell that already.  Insomnia, here I wait for thee.

The door creaked open slowly and Mike peeked inside.  "Can Duo come out to play?"  He smiled a little.  "Please?"

Heero grunted and his hand fell to his side.  I hadn't missed that first little movement; he'd been reaching for the gun he'd stuck in the back of his jeans a few minutes before.  Christ, it was things like that which made me wonder how this kid had managed to stay alive long enough to reach his fifth birthday.  Somebody was smiling on him; living with Heero was definitely not the easiest thing in the world.  Hell, I'd had a hard enough time staying sane when I was the man's partner!  How could this five year-old boy do what I hadn't been able to accomplish?  Had he gotten used to it by now and didn't care or did he not know that most fathers weren't like Heero?  It was no wonder Heero and Stacey had separated--with a husband like that, who could blame her?  How does that saying go--with friends like that, who needs enemies?  Yeah, that's it.  Well, Heero's the guy that saying is describing.  A week with him could make anyone go crazy.  It did make me wonder, though...

"Yes.  I am going to finish packing and then I'll have to leave.  You two go play in the living room until then--quietly."

I was being shooed away, like a pesky cat.  If Mike hadn't been such an awesome little kid, I may actually have been offended.  As it was, I was more than willing to leave the room--if Heero was going to be like that, why bother trying to talk to him at all?  A guy can't just meet up with you years after you parted ways with a big-ass fight and expect you to act like nothing had happened--you can't forget the past and you can't just ignore big things like what made our friendship go down the hole.

He may have forgotten, but I hadn't.  And, playing with Mike's cars on the floor, I reminded myself that, like it or not, Heero Yuy was not my friend.  Friend's just don't _do things like that and then act as though they can just blow it off like it never happened at all._

What, you actually want me to tell you what happened between us?  Get real.  My mouth may run a mile a minute, but I'm not about to spill private and painful information like that for someone just because they ask me to.  Sorry, I'm not that generous.  Unless you've got cash.  A lot of it.  And maybe even then I won't tell you anything, who knows?  It all depends, you know?

"You and my dad don't like each other very much, do you?" Mike asked, interrupting my thoughts with his childish voice and innocence.  Christ, I love little kids.

I didn't look at him, just pushed the taxicab I was using over the edge of the couch's arm and watching it fall to the floor.  "Look, an accident!  Quick, Mike, call the ambulance!"  He didn't move, even though I knew damn well that the ambulance and the fire truck were his favorite cars and that he used them whenever he could.

"You didn't answer my question.  My father says that not answering people's questions is rude."

Damn it.  Weren't kids supposed to have short attention spans or something?  Stupid kids.  "We had a fight, a really long time ago," I said finally, shrugging my shoulders.

"Yesterday?"

I laughed at that.  "No, kiddo--a long while before yesterday.  Before you were born, believe it or not.  Look, we'll talk about it some other time.  Right now this taxicab needs some saving, okay?"

"Okay."  He lunged for his toy ambulance.  "Don't worry, taxicab driver, I can help you!"  He started making those alarm sounds again and got to work saving my taxi.  I found a tow-truck and brought it to the disaster scene, helping the ambulance sort through the wreckage.

Almost half an hour later, Heero emerged from his bedroom, his single suitcase in hand.  He set it by the door.  Then he hovered over us  for a few moments and watched us play a little.  The current scenario was something along the lines of a motorcycle gang mugging a bank and a grocery store at the same time, with Dave the Daring Duckling as one cyclist and Andy the Angry Ant (who was invisible, I think) as the other cyclist.  There was a running theme there about Dave the Daring Duckling falling down under the scrutinizing eyes of peer pressure, but the main plot was the bank robbery.  Heero wasn't amused and, after a bit of observation, he scowled.

"Ducks don't ride motorcycles," he said finally, sounding more than a little irritated.  "What does this one think he's doing?"

"Robbing a bank," Mike supplied cheerfully, making Andy the Angry Ant pop a wheelie.  "Duo said that they could."

Okay, so having the motorcycle gang create general havoc and mayhem had been my idea.  What else were they supposed to do?  Leather-bound ducklings and ants rarely go around planting flower gardens and helping little old ladies cross the street, though it's not exactly unheard of.  I don't know why Heero started acting like I was corrupting his son or something, but he did.  You should have heard the lecture I got!  I mean, jeez, it's not like I was telling Mike about things a person couldn't see everyday on television, or oftentimes on the street!

I pointed that out to Heero, and he got real snippy.  "But not _here," he said, practically growling at me.  Oh, fuck that.  He _was_ growling at me._

Looking back on that, I've really got to admire Mike.  Hell, the two of us were practically yelling at each other now, but he didn't even raise an eyebrow.  I don't think he even really noticed; he just sat there and pushed Andy Ant's motorcycle back and forth along the carpet, never looking up at us.  It was kind of sad, really.  The poor kid was probably used to it by now, given the whole situation with Heero and Stacey, and he didn't think twice about Heero and I getting up in arms with one another.  It was a sobering thought.

Something must have brought that to mind then, too, because I shut up and stopped the argument.  Mike didn't have to hear it and I didn't have to deal with it.  I checked my watch.  "Don't you have somewhere to be?"

Heero blinked, probably startled by this change of pace and the sudden cease in my own witty banter, and checked his own watch.  "Aa."

That made Mike giggle, though I'm still not sure why, and that made me feel guilty.  He'd been listening to every word.  Every fucking word.

Heero went back over to the closet and pulled out his jacket, which was a dark blue color and kind of ratty.  It struck me as familiar, but I couldn't figure out why for the life of me.  He shrugged it on.  "Try not to--"

The phone rang, interrupting him in mid-sentence.  Mike's eyes lit up.  "I'll get it!" he announced loudly, hopping up.  Heero's eyes widened.

"No you won't," he declared, grabbing onto the blonde boy's shirt collar.  "Duo, get that," he ordered.  I shrugged, obeying for a change.

"Yo," I said as I picked up the receiver and set it against my ear.  Heero had an old voice-and-listen phone, which surprised me quite a bit.  The only things that used that system were phone booths.  Most everyone these days--including me--has a view-phone, the kind we had sometimes used for transmissions back in the days when the Gundams had still been around.  This phone, however, was older.  You couldn't see who was talking to you, which sucks, if you ask me.  It probably came in handy here, though, what with Mike running around and all.  Heero glared at me when he heard my greeting and let Mike sit back down as soon as he deemed it safe.  Mike immediately started playing with his cars.

"Maxwell?"  The person on the other end of the phone--Wufei--sounded surprised, and, honestly, I didn't blame him.  "Did I call the wrong number or did--"

"Were you calling for Heero?"

There was a very brief hesitation and I heard some papers rustling in the background.  "I suppose so.  I was simply given the number and told to relay a brief message."

"Business matters?"

"Something along those lines.  Where are you?  Yuy's place?  How did you manage to find it?  We've had people here searching for years and we still don't know where it is."  He paused momentarily.  "Odd that they can't find his location but that they have no trouble finding his phone number, isn't it?"

"Maybe it was just a lucky guess."

"Perhaps.  What are you doing there?"

"Oh, you know.  Destruction, general mayhem, and other such things."  We both laughed at that.  "Nah, I'm staying for a few days to keep an eye or two on Mike.  The two of them live in my apartment complex, you know."

"Who?"

"Mike.  His son."  I saw Heero twitch a bit when I said that and I grinned.  This was tormenting him, I just knew it, and he wanted to know who the hell I was talking to.  For all he knew, I was telling the landlord all his deep, dark secrets.  Lucky him, I guess.

"He has a son?"  Wufei didn't sound so much surprised as he did amazed.  "Is that at all safe?"

"Depends.  Who are you worried about, Mike, Heero, or society in general?" I asked.  Heero's glare intensified with every word I spoke. This was fun!

"All of the above."

"In that case, I'd have to say probably not, maybe, and no, but it all seems to be working out.  D'you want to talk to him?"

Wufei hesitated again.  "Not particularly.  Just tell him that Une is glad he reconsidered and finally agreed and that he's welcome back at any time.  He should know what that means; I don't know and I don't want to find out, really.  Is everything going all right for you, Maxwell?"

"More or less.  Heero's giving me the evil eye, though."

"You probably deserve it."  He chuckled at that.  "I'll be seeing you soon, then, if this damned hotel will ever send up that map I asked for three hours ago."

That startled me a little.  "Hotel?  Are you on colony right now?"

"More or less.  I'm in the colony chain--about a ten-minute shuttle ride from your sector.  I was planning to call you once I finished up with some business, but it seems I saved myself the phone call.  Usual place at the usual time?  You are welcome to bring your charge along--I'm interested in meeting the young gentleman."

"You would be.  See you tomorrow."

"Until then."  He hung up and I set down the receiver of Heero's phone and grinned.  Heero was glaring at me, and, if looks could kill, I wouldn't be telling you this now, so I dispelled a few of his worries before he decided to strangle me.  "Une says thanks and wants you to know that you're welcome back whenever you want," I told him.  Heero grunted, but the mean look on his face sort of melted away.  Mike smiled, never looking up from the toy cars he was still pushing across the floor.  He started making quiet 'vroom vroom' and 'whirrr' sounds as he moved Andy Ant's motorcycle around.

"Who was it?" Heero asked gruffly.  I shrugged.

"Wufei.  Did you want to talk to him?"

"No."  He picked his suitcase up off the floor.  "I'm leaving now."  He set his free hand on top of Mike's head and ruffled the boy's blonde hair.  Mike got to his feet and hugged Heero around the waist; Heero returned the hug rather half-heartedly.

"I'll miss you," Mike told him.

"I'll be back in a few days.  You be good and do what Duo tells you to do, unless it's something stupid and you know better anyway.  Remember that Duo's not always right, no matter what he likes to think," he said, his eyes sliding up to meet mine.

Mike giggled.  "Mmkay."

I picked Dave the Daring Duckling up from off the couch and threw him at Heero's head, just hard enough to make it sting if it actually hit him.  He avoided it easily and it made a dull thunking sound when it hit the wall.  Missed.  Damn.

A few more words passed between father and son, and Heero was soon out the door.  As the thing shut and locked behind him, Mike turned around and faced me, a big grin on his face.  A smile tugged on my mouth.

"That was a good throw," he told me, retrieving Dave the Daring Duckling and handing him to me.  I shrugged.

"Missed, though."

Mike grinned at me.  "That really kind of depends on what you were aiming for."

Ooh, smart kid.  I grinned and held up a toy minivan.  "You want to play with the cars a little more, kiddo?"

He shook his head no.  "I'm tired of cars right now."

Yikes!  An hour with the midget and I was already running out of things to do with him!  This wasn't going to bode well.  "Oh, okay.  So what do you want to do instead?"

He put some careful consideration into that for a few moments until he finally smiled and asked, "Have you ever played Twister?  It's fun."

I hadn't, but he decided to teach me how to play anyway.  It was simple enough, I suppose, and frightfully pre-modern.  It involved spreading a white mat with colored circles on it over the floor and using a voice-activated spinning thing to order you around.  When you said 'spin,' a little dial would circle the thing until it landed on something and told you, in a boring, monotonous voice, to put your left hand on yellow or your right foot on green.  Things of that nature.  You had to follow the directions until someone fell over and lost.  It wasn't easy, exactly, but it was fun and it involved a bit of skill.  I felt bad for Mike, whose arms and legs were short and couldn't reach so easily, but he was a lot more flexible, so it probably evened out in the end.

We played the game close to a thousand times, stopping only to grab something to eat, until about seven-thirty, when the batteries on the spinning thing ran down.  Technology always amazes me; we can make a voice-activated game for kids and keep a million colonies alight but can't make batteries that last forever.  Go figure.  Anyway, I think the final score was something like nine hundred ninety-six for Mike and four for me.  I didn't bother telling him that I'd fallen on purpose a lot of times; let the kid have his victory.

Mike said he was tired, so I helped him get ready for bed.  It didn't exactly require a lot of effort on my part, anyway.  He could do most everything himself; I was really only needed to help him reach a few things that were too high up for him to reach on his own and to make sure he didn't drown in a puddle of his own toothpaste.  How much of the stuff does one kid need to use, anyway?  I think he squeezed half the tube onto his brush, though I'm sure that most of it didn't even reach his mouth.  I found out why he used so much later: Mike's toothpaste was bubble gum flavored and actually tasted pretty damn good--I used the other half of the tube that night brushing my own teeth.

Mike was in bed about ten before eight, earlier than Heero had ordered, and went straight to sleep.  He had a nightlight shaped like a fire engine and his room was pretty much done entirely with a car and truck motif, though there was nothing hanging on the walls.  I smiled when I saw it.  Heero probably locked the room when the landlord came by to visit and, since this room was a dead giveaway that someone under the age of seven was living here, he would avoid showing it to him.  I wonder, even now, just what sort of excuses he would have had to make up.  A room can only smell funny, flood, be infested with bugs, and have the key locked inside of it only so often; sooner or later someone's going to get suspicious.

"Goodnight, Mike," I said softly as I left the room and shut the door behind me.  Mike murmured something unintelligible.

With Mike in bed, I didn't know what to do with myself.  I had a bag of clothes, books, and some music on the floor by the couch, but I wasn't in the mood to do much of anything.  I _should have looked through the paper for another job (the want ads were folded up in my jacket pocket, along with the daily comics), but didn't particularly feel like doing that, either.  So I collapsed on the couch and put my feet up._

"Spin," I said, my voice sounding haggard even to my own ears.  The Twister spin-thingy came back to life.

"Leeeft foooot oooon bluuuuueee..."

It was like listening to a movie in slow motion.  I yawned; at least it had been interesting for a minute or two.  I looked around the place.  Heero obviously didn't entertain much, but what exactly did he _do when Mike had been put to bed?  I sighed; he probably used that laptop of his until he was about ready to fall over._

I wondered briefly if it would be the same laptop as the one he'd had in the wars but then decided that I didn't really care.  He and that machine had a symbiotic union type thing going on; they were practically attached at the hip.  And yes, I do know that I'm talking about the thing as if it was human.  Can you blame me?  After all, he used to treat that battered machine better than he did any of us.

I eventually fell asleep on the couch, remembering and pondering, and woke up around eleven that same night, shivering.  Mike was still sleeping when I checked up on him, which didn't surprise me, so I went to Heero's room and crawled between the bed-sheets.

The bed smelled like him--or at least the way I remembered him smelling (I used to pay attention to even the smallest details back then, things like the color of the buttons on Quatre's favorite vest and such) and it was a restless night for me.  I spent most of it tossing and turning until I finally gave up and slept on the floor.

**--to be continued--**


	4. Wufei

CAUGHT BETWEEN THE BANISTER

Part Four: Wufei

Disclaimer: don't own them.  Don't want them.  Don't need them.  I'll tell you if anything changes, but don't hold your breath.  Wouldn't want you to pass out or anything now, would we?

**Warnings/Rating: Not much here to speak of.  Maybe one or two hints of yaoi or shonen ai, if you're lucky.  There are a few psychological references, if you can catch them.  My usual insanity.  Fun stuff like that.  This part is rated PG for a few four-letter words.  That's all.**

**Author's Notes:** I.  Hate.  This.  Part.  HATE it.  With a capital H-A-T-E.

---

I woke up the next morning a little after nine.  My neck was sore and my left foot was on pins and needles--not exactly a fun way to wake up, you can trust me on that one.  I made a note to myself: Heero's floor was damn uncomfortable.

The door to the bedroom was closed, but I could faintly hear the sounds of the television through the wooden panel.  It sounded like Mike was already awake and watching his morning television programs.  I sat up, rubbing my stiff neck, and checked the time.  Nine-thirty; that was unusually late for me.  I wondered how long Mike had been up and if he was bored or anything.  With his varied attention span, you never could tell, really.

I was still wearing the same jeans and shirt I'd arrived in the day before, having been too bored and tired last night to change them.  I gave them a quick once-over to make sure they didn't reek or anything, in the typical fashion of the adolescent male.  I'll let you fill in the blanks on that one.  Anyway, they were decent enough for the time being and wearing them two days in a row meant there was a little less laundry to do when Thursday, my customary washday, came around again.  That was rather cool.

Don't look at me like that, for Christ's sake!  You'd think I'd just committed some sort of major crime or something just by wearing my clothes two days in a row!  Back during the war, I was lucky to have more than one outfit at any given time, and I'd wear that for weeks on end!  Hell, I didn't have much of a choice.  So don't diss my personal hygiene--I'm just as clean as you are, when you get right down to it, and it isn't as if you haven't worn a certain pair of jeans two or three days in a row, or your favorite shirt twice in one week.  Give me a break...

Right.  Anyway.  I emerged from the bedroom in my two-day old outfit (I saw that--I _told you not to make that face anymore!) and went straight to the bathroom.  Mike was in front of the TV, like I'd guessed, but he wasn't really watching it.  He was sitting on the floor, his back leaning against a footstool, and he had a collection of toy cars in front of him, which he was examining or something.  He wasn't doing much but looking at the cars.  It was a little creepy.  It wasn't just what he was doing, though, that made it so creepy, really.  It was the way he was looking at those toy cars of his--like they were real cars, and rare ones at that, and he was inspecting them for the most miniscule scratch or problem.  It reminded me of the way Heero used to examine each and every piece of his Gundam after (and, when he had the time, before) each mission or battle he went into.  It was a meticulous, calculating, and even cold look.  And that was __not a comforting thought at all._

I escaped to the bathroom without him even noticing me, and after taking care of business, I brushed my teeth (using my own toothpaste this time.  I made a mental note to buy some more of Mike's kind before Heero got back) and combed through my hair, trying to get all of the daily knots and tangles out of it while I still could.  I'm quite accustomed to doing this every morning, quickly and efficiently, so that little exercise took me only ten minutes.  I was out of the bathroom within fifteen minutes, hair braided and all.  Yay, go me.

Although Mike hadn't noticed me during my trek to the bathroom, he looked up and smiled when I made my grand exit.  "G'morning!" he said brightly.  I grinned at him.

"Hey."  I sat down on the couch beside him, glancing at the television.  "What are you watching?"

"It's a show called Bulbo and Mindy," he explained.  "It's kind of funny, but I've seen this one about a billion times.  See, Bulbo says some really mean stuff to Mindy and she gets angry because he hurt her feelings.  And then she says some stuff to Bulbo back, and then they fight and stop talking to each other for about half the episode.  Everything turns out okay in the end, though.  They end up being friends again, I mean."

"Too bad it doesn't always end up that way in real life, too," I mused.  On the screen, Bulbo, a green puppet with short, spiky, and awful-looking orange hair was calling the pink-skinned puppet with long, purple hair (which I assumed was supposed to be Mindy) a poo-head and a butt-face.  While the terminology amused me, the show looked pretty awful.

Mike shrugged.  "It happens like that sometimes," he insisted, protesting my last statement weakly.  I decided to be nice and not push the point any further, so I only smiled brightly at him and pretended I agreed with him.

"So what do you want for breakfast?" I asked, changing the subject.  "I make pretty good waffles, if I do say so myself.  Which I do.  Does that sound good?"

He looked pleasantly shocked.  "You mean I can have _sugar for __breakfast?"  He made it sound like I'd just told him tomorrow would be Christmas.  That made me wonder exactly what sort of stuff Heero was feeding this kid every morning._

I smiled.  "Sure, why not?  Your dad won't mind too much, especially if he doesn't find out about it in the first place.  What he doesn't know can't hurt him, right?"

Mike giggled.  "Right."

"So waffles are okay?" I asked again, to clarify.

"Ahuh!"  The nods that accompanied that statement were extremely enthusiastic; I almost thought his head was going to fall of his shoulders.

Now that I think about it, that would have been pretty gruesome and I would have had a hell of a time explaining it to Heero.  How would you go around telling someone that?  'Yeah, I was making some illegal waffles and...  Well, I'm not sure how it happened, exactly, but his head just kind of...  Y'know, fell.  Fell of his body, that is.  There wasn't a lot of blood and it looked fairly painless...  Well, he was smiling at the time, but how would I know?  Anyway, I did everything I could; it's too bad, really.  See you.'

Yeah, I could see how that wouldn't work.

Anyway, I half-listened to Mike's television program while I started making waffles from scratch, which isn't quite as hard as some people think it is.  Bulbo and Mindy was a rip-off of about ten thousand puppet programs that had come before it and the plot had loopholes at every corner and the ending was obvious.  The characterization was weak, the puppets were ugly, and they had the worst voices I'd ever heard.  Add all that together and there was a ten to one chance that Bulbo and Mindy was a universal phenomena, a hit in at least six Sphere Colonies.  Kids go for the strangest things...

Bulbo had a very deep voice for his apparently young age, which irked me a little, but it was Mindy's high-pitched nasal voice that really got to me.  I cringed whenever I heard it.  I was rather grateful when an annoying old commercial jingle interrupted her and tried to convince the world to buy a laundry detergent that would bleach without losing color.  The thought of bleach reminded me of something and I paused a minute in my waffle making.

"Hey, Mike, do you want to meet a friend of mine later today?"

"What's he like?"

I grinned.  "He's crabby, mean, and philosophical," I told him, knowing full well that Mike wouldn't know a word like philosophical off the top of his head.

"Oh," he said, distracted slightly.  "All right.  That sounds like fun."

Bulbo and Mindy came back on soon after that and I began serving waffles just as the show ended, in one of those sickly-sweet happy endings that kids seem to love but older, sane people can't stand.  Why is that?

"I'm sorry, Mindy.  Can you ever forgive me?" the little green puppet asked the pink one.

"Of course, Bulbo!  I'm sorry too.  Let's be friends forever," the pink puppet replied.

"Can we, Mindy?"

"Of course, Bulbo.  True friends don't let things like that come between them."  The two puppets hugged each other, smiling widely, and then the theme song came on.  It was just as irritating as the show itself, with little kids singing something that closely resembled an off-key "It's A Small World After All," but with different words.  Mike clicked off the television and came running to the table for his plate.  He practically dived into it.

Breakfast was quick, and I started to clean up the place while Mike got ready to leave the apartment.  Before I knew it, we were stepping off the bus and walking the half block journey to a small café done up in a late-twentieth century style.  This was my favorite café in the whole universe, mostly because you could stay in there for hours and no one would try to talk to you or lure you into conversation.  Other places, I've noticed, always have those people hanging around who make it their main goal in life to bother you.  I think the restaurants and café's and all actually hire them to badger you, just in case you stay longer than they'd like or if they just don't think having you around makes them look good.  This place, though, was kind of private.  People came here to meet their friends or to have a quiet meal alone, so no one would bug them, but if they actually wanted to talk, none of the people working there would tell them to shut up so they could get back to work.  It was kind of like a bar for people who don't like drinking, or who just don't like bars in general.

Yup, that made a lot more sense in my head than it did out loud.  Do you at least get the gist of what I mean?  I hope so, because I have no intention on explaining it again.  So there.

Anyway, Wufei was already at a table when Mike and I arrived, nursing a mug of his usual--some sort of sweet tea, spiced with something I couldn't pronounce and he couldn't describe.  I grinned at him as I passed, acknowledging his presence, and went straight to the counter, lifting Mike onto one of the red stools.  They weren't really red, I guess, they were just upholstered that way, but they're still kind of red, right?  The waitress at the counter, done up in tight black pants and a thing that kind of resembled a corset, smiled, more at Mike than at me, and asked what we'd like to order.  Well, that's the loose translation.  What she _actually_ said was "Kin ah tooka redor, bois," but she was speaking with a thick colony accent, so we could excuse her unintelligible manner of speaking.

What, you didn't know about the colony accents?  Jeez, you've really got to get out and spend some more time away from Earth.  Yeah, a lot of colony kids manage to pick up an individual and unique accent, depending on where and how they grew up.  Oftentimes someone, usually a parent, but sometimes a church official or something, manage to break the habit while they're still young, but some kids just never grow out of it.  Like today's waitress.  You get used to hearing traces of those old accents, so no one really thinks anything of it anymore.

"I'll take a double vanilla latté, extra on the latté part," I said with a big grin.  Then I poked Mike in the ribs, making him squirm and giggle.  He almost fell of the stool, but he caught himself in time.  He's very ticklish.  And, believe it or not, he gets that from Heero.  I learned that little fact a long time ago, back when we were partners and got along just fine and dandy.  "You want anything, Mike?  Ice cream?  Milk?  Strong alcohol?"

He pondered this for a moment or two, his brow furrowing and his tongue poking out of his mouth as he thought.  I didn't really think it was that hard of a decision, but what did I know?  "Do they have any strawberry ice cream?" he asked finally.  I looked up at the waitress lady and she nodded.

"You bet they do, kiddo.  S'that what you want?"

"Yeah!"

"All right."  I smiled at the waitress lady-girl thing.  "You got that?"

"Owm dibble ninalli lateind a strabelly ickrem," she read off her list.  It took me a minute to decipher that, but then I grinned.

"Exactly."  I wasn't entirely sure what she'd said, but it all sounded fairly close.  I pointed at Wufei.  "We'll be sitting with the crabby Asian man by the window.  Thanks a thousand, Miss."

We abandoned her for Wufei, who stood up as we approached.  He was taller than I remembered, which wasn't saying much, comparatively, and his glasses made him look a lot older.  Back in the war, he had worn contact lenses whenever possible, as it was a bit difficult for him to keep the glasses from falling off while he battled in a Gundam.  He had griped about it a lot too--he hated wearing contacts for some reason.

Wufei smiled at me, then down at Mike.  "Hello," he said.  "My name is Chang Wufei."

"I'm Michael Meiji Yuy.  My father calls me Michael, my mother calls me Meiji, and Duo calls me Mike," he answered solemnly.  He was being rather formal to Wufei, which shouldn't have surprised me at all.  Wufei has some sort of regal aura about him--unless you're used to it or honestly don't give a damn one way or another, you can't help but be affected by it.  Honest.  "It is very nice to meet you, Mister Chain."

"My friends call me Wufei," he told Mike, a smile tugging gently on the corner of his mouth.  "You can do the same, provided that you will let me call you Mike."

"Okay!"

"Then it's decided."  He shook Mike's hand.  "It's a pleasure to meet you, Mike."  With the introductions over and done with, he sat back down.  Mike wiggled into a chair next to him, on his left.  I sat to Wufei's right, my back facing the window, so that I was directly across from Mike.  The table was a small rectangle-type shape, and it was nice and close so that we could talk without shouting at each other from opposite ends of the thing.

Mike grinned at me.  "You were wrong, Duo!  He's not mean at all!"

Wufei's eyebrows practically shot off his head.  He adjusted his glasses and he gave me an amused look.  "Is that what Duo told you?" he asked, holding his tea in both hands.  "Hm.  Perhaps I need to practice at it, then?"

"Couldn't hurt," I told him.

Mike didn't seem to follow that part of the conversation, partly because he didn't know the "inside" joke that Wufei and I had been passing along for years.  For that matter, sometimes _I don't remember the joke either, or I forget what it's about, so you can't really blame the kid for that one.  The other reason he didn't follow that part of the conversation was because his eyes were trained on the waitress lady-girl thing behind the counter, who had just put the finishing touches on my latté and was putting mound after mound of ice cream into a bowl.   I smiled._

"Mike, a watched pot takes longer to boil," I told him.  "Watching her isn't going to get your ice cream here any faster."

"Maxwell, the expression is 'a watched pot _never_ boils,'" Wufei corrected.  "You do know that, right?"  I nodded, but Wufei gave me a doubtful look.

"It will boil, though, if you watch it long enough, but it seems to take longer," I said.  "Your way may be more traditional, but mine makes more sense."

Mike giggled.  "You're both wrong!  A pot doesn't boil at all," he said logically.  "The stuff in the pot can boil, but the pot itself just can't do it."

Wufei considered that, then snorted.  "You are your father's son, I see."

"Well, who else's son would I be?"

"Good question."

The waitress lady-girl thing came by then and dropped off my latté and Mike's ice cream with a nod before she rushed back to work.  Wufei looked at the bowl in front of Mike, which was piled as high as could be with ice cream.  So high, in fact, that we probably could have swam in it, had it been melted.  He gave it a condescending look and then looked pointedly at his watch.  I knew exactly what he was trying to say--ice cream at eleven in the morning, while tasty, wasn't exactly considered good for you.  I shrugged, making a mental note to tell Wufei just how deprived of sugar Mike really was.  Then we'd see what Wu-bear would have to say about an ice cream mountain at eleven o'clock!

"Do you have any kids, Wufei?" Mike asked just before plunging into his ice cream mountain.  Wufei smiled at him.

"I will soon," he said.  That actually reminded me...

"How's Kyla doing?" I asked.  Kyla Juliana had, at one time, been a co-worker of mine, and I'd had the great idea of introducing her to Wufei about three years ago.  They hit it off really well and they started dating--which was fun for me, because Wu-bear was on colony a lot more than he normally was.  After about a year and a half, they'd gotten married.  Well, eloped.  That's practically the same thing, right?

She was a few years older than Wu-bear, didn't agree with his justice philosophies at all, and her family hadn't quite approved of him, but they did it anyway.  It had surprised almost everyone, really, except me, mostly because people had kind of assumed Wufei was gay.  Sure, he'd had a lot of boyfriends over the years, I'll grant you, but that doesn't mean he can't enjoy both ends of the spectrum.  Swing both ways, you know?  People really shouldn't make assumptions like that; it's not very flattering.

So yes, Wufei and Kyla got married.  Don't look so surprised.  They're expecting their first kid sometime within the next month.

Wufei shrugged.  "As well as can be expected.  She ran into a bit of trouble at the beginning of the month, but she came out of it all right."  He smiled.  "She was a little upset that I was being sent away on business right now, and I can't say I was too happy about it either, but Une insisted."

"Kyla will get over it," I decided.  "She always does."

"True."  His gaze shifted back to Mike.  "Are you enjoying your ice cream?" he asked, not even bothering to hide the disapproval in his voice.  Mike didn't seem to notice, or he didn't care.  He just nodded, grinning.

"It's really good," he said, looking up from his bowl.  I started coughing, mostly so I could keep myself from laughing, and handed him a napkin to get about a pound of ice cream off his face.  He swiped it over his cheeks and mouth and went back to eating, a little slower than before.  I started to wonder how I was going to get the stuff out of his hair without getting all messy myself.  Wufei watched Mike eat for a minute or two, sipping his tea every now and then.  He started to talk after a moment of contemplation.

"Your mother, Mike, what is she like?"

The boy shrugged listlessly, squirming a bit in his seat.  That bothered me--what about his mother made him so uncomfortable?  "She's really pretty," he said finally, staring at the ice cream still left in his bowl.  "And she's nice, most of the time.  She's sick, though, and that always used to get my dad upset.  Sometimes he'd get real angry with her.  But she really is nice."

Wufei hesitated.  "What's wrong with her?  Why is she sick?"

"I don't know what it's called," he said.  "It might start with a z.  She talks to things that aren't really there and to people who don't really exist.  My dad says that she didn't used to do that, but then something happened and now she does it a lot.  She has medicine for it, but it doesn't help all the time."  He toyed with his spoon.  "Sometimes she doesn't know who my dad is or she can't remember.  And she tried to hurt him once.  That's why she doesn't live with us anymore--she lives in a place close to our apartment with all sorts of doctors."

Wufei looked just as concerned as I felt.  "Has she ever hurt _you, Mike?"_

"No.  She always knows who I am and she's always really worried about me all the time.  She thinks that my dad is going to hurt me and then lock me in a closet or something so she always is really mean to him.  But he wouldn't do anything like that," he said, shrugging.  "And she's really pretty--did I tell you that?  She's got really long hair and it's the same color as mine."  He giggled, looking at me.  "It's not as long as Duo's, though."

Wufei wisely decided to let the subject drop.  Mike obviously didn't want to talk about her and I could suddenly understand why not.  And I understood why Heero had decided to divorce her, and why he felt so compelled to stay on this colony.  I almost felt sorry for him.

"Most people don't have hair as long as mine, kiddo," I said brightly.

"Why not?"

Wufei smirked, but that worried look in his eyes didn't go away.  "Most people have more common sense than that."

I whapped Wufei on the arm.  "Shows what you know," I retorted, tossing my head.  "Lots and lots of people admire my hair, you know."

"Why?  It takes you three hours to get it all clean and another several hours for it to dry, since you don't believe in using hair-dryers," he pointed out.  Mike looked at my braid thoughtfully but didn't say anything about it.  Wufei and I passed a few more good-natured insults back and forth, which seemed to amuse Mike, until Wufei got tired of sitting in the café and insisted on paying for everyone's treat.  That was nothing new--he always insisted on paying--but I argued with him about it for a good while, giving Mike the chance to finish his ice cream.  Once we finally managed to get out the door, just in time to avoid the lunch-hour rush, the three of us decided to walk to a park that was about three blocks away.  Mike started interrogating Wufei as we walked.

"How long have you and Duo been friends?"

"Too long," Wufei said smoothly.  "About six or seven years."  I counted that up quickly to verify and let out a low whistle.

"Whoa, Wu-bear, we've been friends for way too long.  I think it's time to break up."

"All right."

Mike didn't seem to care about that bit of the conversation.  "So you've known him for a long time," he said.  "That means you know my father, right?" he asked.  He was walking in between Wufei and I and had a firm grip on my hand.  Wufei had his hands in his pockets, probably because he didn't want to get all sticky, and he nodded.

"I did.  We worked together for quite awhile."

"Oh," Mike said.  "So were you a soldier too?"

My eyes met Wufei's briefly over Mike's head.  I could tell that the distinction as a soldier irked him more than he was willing to let on, but he nodded anyway.  "Yes," he said carefully, "I suppose so."

Mike nodded vaguely.  "And Duo was there too?"

"Sometimes," Wufei confirmed.  He appeared to think about that, adjusting his glasses.  "Well, perhaps more often than he should have been."

"Yeah, stupid me," I mumbled.  I found it interesting that Mike hadn't asked whether or not I too had been a 'soldier,' but I wasn't about to worry over it.

Mike pressed on.  "So that means you know what happened to make my dad and Duo hate each other so much," he decided.  "You were there, so you would know, right?"

Somehow I had known that this had been coming.  I shot a warning look at Wufei, which was supposed to be a "don't you dare," kind of glare but probably came off as a "fuzzy pink bunnies are dancing on your head," sort of look, because he opened his mouth to speak anyway.  I whacked him on the arm, but he still ignored me.

"I was there, but I don't know exactly what happened between them.  No one wanted to tell me," he stated, meeting my eyes.  I relaxed a bit; he was well aware of what had happened between Heero and I, no matter what he told Mike, and we both knew it.  He was fibbing a little in order to avoid the subject, for my sake, and I was grateful for it.

I told you he was a good friend, even if he did wear glasses.

Yes, that was a joke.  Wow, congratulations!  You're starting to catch on!

"All I know, Mike, is that sometimes bad things happen and good people often misinterpret it," he went on.  Mike looked a little confused, so Wufei reworded that.  "They both took something the wrong way.  When that happens to people, they sometimes fight and then they both do and say things that they later regret.  Some of those people make peace again--they forgive and forget, and they get to have a happy ending.  Other people will hold a grudge for a long, long time, and oftentimes won't speak to each other.  There are times when that gets to be too much for them to handle and one of them has to leave and escape.  They never get the chance to apologize or to forgive one another."  He looked at me pointedly, frowning.  "That's what happened with Duo and your father."

Mike considered this.  I couldn't help but wonder if he had really understood it all--heck, if I hadn't lived through it, I may not have quite understood it all--but he seemed to get the main gist of it and had a good idea of what Wufei was talking about.  "Do those people--the ones who don't apologize--ever get to live happily ever after?"

Wufei had to think about that.  "Every once in awhile, I suppose."

"Do you think my dad and Duo will get a happy ending?"

Wufei hesitated.  "That depends," he said finally, refusing to look at me.

"On what?" Mike asked.  I scowled; I thought Wufei knew me better than that.  There was no possible way I could ever forgive Heero for what he had done.

"On whether or not they can both let go," he answered shortly and simply, in a tone of voice that would not allow for further discussion on that subject.  That was just fine with me and probably okay with Mike, too, since we reached the park at that point.

The park was pretty pathetic, when you get right down to it, and that's the _best thing I can say about it.  Okay, I'll grant you that there weren't many kids on the colony, but still...  There was an extremely tiny play area with rusty swings, a slide the shape of a very deformed and messed up elephant, and a set of monkey bar type-things--you know, those awful parallel bars that kids are supposed to like.  Hell, the playground on L2, poor and miserable though we were, had been better than this, and that's saying something.  The really sad thing, however, if you really want to know, was that Mike was thrilled to be there._

He tugged on my hand.  "Duo, watch me on the bars!" he cried, releasing my hand and racing towards them.  Then he proceeded to conquer the monkey bars I was just telling you about.  Wufei and I sat on a bench nearby, to watch him and to talk about grown-up things.

Wufei, after a minute, frowned.  "That's odd."

"What is?"

"Look at him.  He's been going back and forth across that bar set since we got here and doesn't look at all tired.  I could barely get across them when I was his age, and I probably couldn't even do that when I was eight or nine, either.  Could you?"

"Never had the chance to try, and I'm way too tall for them now."  I rested my elbows on my knees and propped up my chin with my hands.  "What are you saying, anyway?"

Wufei shrugged.  "I'm not sure.  It just occurred to me that maybe Yuy has been training the boy."

"For what?" I asked incredulously.  "Maybe Mike's just a tad bit more physically fit than you, the nerdy bookworm, or I, the starving street-orphan, ever were when we were kids," I pointed out.  "There's nothing unusual about it that can't be explained away by his having Heero as a dad."

"That's another thing that has been bugging me," he went on.  "Are you sure Yuy is his father?"

I stared at him.  "Dude, Wu-bear, exactly what have you been smoking lately?  Just look at the kid's eyes, man!  Of course Heero's his dad--those are Heero's _eyes_!"

"Lots of children have blue eyes," he pointed out, "and I doubt you've been doing a lot of staring into Yuy's eyes lately."

I grunted.  That statement didn't even deserve an answer.

"Mike doesn't look at all Japanese," Wufei went on.  I rolled my eyes.

"Neither does Heero, for Christ's sake."  I frowned at him.  "Look, let's not discuss Heero's sex life and family, okay?  Even if Mike's _not_ Heero's kid, I'm pretty sure it's none of our business.  I'm not one to pry, you know?"

"I'm not prying," he protested.  "I'm just curious."

"Curiosity killed the cat, Wu-bear."

"Lucky for me that I'm not a cat then, hm?"  He smiled, taking his glasses off for a minute to clean them.  I watched him do it--those things fascinated me vaguely.  "I understand, however.  We won't talk about that."

"Thank you."

"Hello?" Mike called out, trying to get our attention.  He was hanging upside-down by his knees, waving his arms.  "Are you guys paying attention to me or not?"

"You bet we are, kiddo!" I yelled back.  "Stop hanging upside-down, though--you're making me nauseous!"  He looked confused, so I clarified.  "That means sick!"

"Okay!"  He righted himself again and resumed his playtime.  I grinned, watching him.

"He's a cute kid, isn't he?"

"Yes," Wufei answered, but he wasn't really looking at Mike.  He was looking past him, maybe trying to see something above and beyond what was visible to the naked eye.  Or maybe the not so naked eye, since he's got those glasses and all.

"What are you looking at, Wu-bear?" I asked.  He frowned again.

"You haven't forgiven Heero yet, have you?"

"Oh, Christ, what _is this?" I exclaimed.  "We haven't heard from, spoken of, or discussed the guy in years and now that he's come back from the dead or whatever you want to talk about him all the fucking time?"  I was frustrated, to say the least, and probably more than a little bit pissed.  But Wufei only shrugged, unfazed._

"That seems to be the case."  He crossed his arms over his chest.  "Now that you've been forced to see him again and that the two of you have spoken to one another, perhaps this is the best time to talk things over and let bygones be bygones.  It's been over five years, Duo.  That's over one thousand, eight hundred, and twenty-five days.  Don't you think it's about time to forgive him?"

I stared at him.  "You did all that math in your head?  Just now?"

"No.  I've been thinking about that since last night, when you first told me that you'd met up with Heero again.  But that's not the point, Duo.  You need to talk to him."

"You're kidding, right?" I asked.  "Wufei, if that's a joke, it's very much _not_ funny."

"I'm serious," he insisted, pushing his glasses up on his nose.  "You've had five years to stew over it; aren't you tired of hating him for something that wasn't even entirely his fault?"

"At least Quatre apologized," I said darkly.  Wufei sighed.

"I'm not talking about him," he told me.  "Everything that went on between you and Yuy can be blamed entirely on you, as well, if you look at it from a different point of view.  Nothing _had_ to go wrong; you know that.  You had just as much to do with it as he did."

"It was his fault," I muttered.  This wasn't something I wanted to talk about and he damn well knew it.  Hell, I would have preferred to talk about wet cement, which smells funny and is one of the most boring things in the world.

"Judging solely by what I know and what you've told me, I'd have to say it's your fault too.  I don't blame you for not talking to him after it happened, but I don't blame him for leaving, either.  You both did this."

"His fault," I insisted stubbornly.

"Your fault too," he said, not unkindly.  I think I would have preferred it if he'd been mean about it, but that didn't matter.  I took offense to it anyway.

"What, so now you're taking _his side?  You're supposed to be _my_ friend, Wu-bear, and that means you're supposed to support me and believe in me, remember?  __You told me that!  So why are you trying to..." I covered my face in my hands.  "God, this is such shit."_

He was quiet a moment.  "Do you want me to leave?"

"No!  Fuck no."  I looked up, smiling weakly.  "I've got to let the voice of reason hang around for a little while, even if I don't listen to him, right?"

"Ah."  He looked over at the playground thing and smiled.  "Mike seems to have found a friend."  I looked over and grinned.  Mike was sitting on top of the monkey bars, talking to a little girl in a blue dress. She had very curly brown hair and freckles and wore tiny tennis shoes, which didn't quite complement the dress, but whatever. She was sitting on top of the deformed elephant slide, about two feet away from Mike.

"Looks like it," I agreed.  "I wonder who she is?"

"That's my daughter," a woman said proudly from the next bench over.  She looked a lot like the little girl, except older and with a lot less freckles.  I cringed; had she been listening to us talk the entire time?  "Her name is Amy.  I'm Krista."

"Hi.  My name's Duo and this is Wufei.  The blonde midget over there is Mike," I said, smiling.

 "Is Mike your son?" she asked.

"Nope.  I'm just watching him for a few days.  His dad lives in my apartment complex and practically begged me to baby-sit while he went on a business trip."

Wufei frowned.  "I thought you refused to do it until after he offered you mass amounts of--" I kicked him.  "Never mind."

Krista laughed.  "You two are so cute!  Are you 'together' or just friends?"

"Friends," we both said quickly.  Wufei flushed.

"Wu-bear is married to a chick down on Earth.  She's going to have a kid fairly soon, too."

Krista laughed again.  She did that a lot.  "First child?  Oh, I pity her!"  She focused her gaze on Wufei.  "You had better not stop for coffee on your way to the delivery room, understand?  I was about ready to kill my husband--Seth--when he did that!"  She pressed on, not waiting for an answer.  "Is your apartment complex around here?" she asked.  "I looked everywhere on this colony for a complex that would let kids in and couldn't find one!  Amy, Seth, and I finally settled for one of those trashy town houses in the main sector.  How did your friend manage it?"

"Smuggling, I think.  And he's not my friend--just some guy that I happen to know."

"He's trusting you to watch his son, though, so I would say that's friendship.  He _must_ be your friend!" Krista insisted.  I snorted.

"Or maybe he's just stupid.  I know a lot of stupid people."

Wufei, to his credit, didn't comment on that, though I could tell he wanted to.  I'd half expected a witty yet scathing remark from him, but he only smirked.  Sometimes he's a better friend than I give him credit for, honestly.  He makes a really fantastic best friend.

No, you can't have him.  He's _my_ best friend.  Go away.

"Well, there are a lot of stupid people out there," Krista said without missing a beat.  She laughed.  Again.  Which wasn't a bad thing, really, since she had a really pretty-sounding laugh, but did she have to do it every two minutes?  Honestly!  It's like when some guy gets a nifty new watch, you know?  He doesn't go around saying "ask me what time it is!" at every possible opportunity, whether he wants people to notice the watch or not.  All I'm saying is that nice things shouldn't be showed off in such excess, do you know what I mean?

"How old is Amy?" Wufei asked, wisely avoiding the subject of stupid people.

"Almost six, so that means we'll have to leave the colony soon, before the August school session starts," Krista said with a shrug.  Wufei frowned, confused.

"Why not just send her to school here?"

I rolled my eyes and Krista gave him a tolerant look.  "This colony chain doesn't have a school system at all--no one thought it was important, I suppose.  That actually explains why you don't see very many kids up here.  It's quite possible that Amy and Mike are the only two children under eighteen actually living on this colony, you know.  I imagine his father will take him off colony soon too, so Mike can get a decent education."

"It's a bit of a sore spot with the locals," I explained.  "A lot of places here don't even let kids inside anymore, and they definitely don't let kids live there.  There aren't even many hotels here that'll let kids stay overnight."  I shrugged.  "It's been like this for a long time now.  Even since before the wars, I think."

"Our lack of a school system is huge concern nowadays," Krista said.  "Several of us came here because it's a good colony, and it's a good place to live.  The crime and homicide rates are as low as can be and, if you have the money to live here, it's a wonderful place to grow up in.  But once your children get to be school-aged, you either have to move elsewhere or ship them off to a boarding school off colony.  Most people can't quite afford the costs of boarding school; they're astronomical."

"Then why not bring it to the colony official's attention?  Who runs the board of this colony cluster?" Wufei asked, either confused or irritated.  I really couldn't tell which.

"Willard Braun," Krista and I said together.  That made her laugh.  Argh!  Damn my timing!

"He's been in charge of this chain since long before we were even born, Wu-bear.  He's about seventy years old, he's been reigning for almost fifty years, and he's a tight-fisted bastard to boot."

"Duo!  You don't say things like that with women around!" Wufei told me with a scowl.  I rolled my eyes and Krista started to laugh again.

"I could think of several _worse things to say about Braun," she said.  "Trust me on that."  She sighed.  "And we have tried sending notices and alerts to him and the rest of the board, but nothing seems to work.  He just keeps on rejecting them."  She frowned.  "So most of us have just given up."_

"Ah."  Wufei puzzled over something, adjusting his glasses, and looked at me.  "Do you know why Yuy keeps Mike on this colony?" he asked.  I shrugged.

"How should I know?  I asked him once and he bit my head off--said it was necessary or vital or something."  I looked over at the playground, where Mike and Amy were digging a hole in the dirt, talking and laughing.  I wondered if Amy had a laugh like her mother's and decided that I really didn't want to know.  "I think it might have something to do with his ex-wife, though."

"Hm."

Krista smiled.  "Well, that's enough political jibber-jabber for one day," she said cheerfully.  "So what do you--" She stopped suddenly, catching a glimpse of her watch.  "Oops!  I'm sorry to run away like this, but Amy and I have to go.  It was nice meeting you both."

"Yeah, you too."  I grinned.  "Don't be a stranger."

She left then, taking Amy with her.  Wufei and I watched them go, then looked at each other.  Wufei smiled vaguely.  "She was... nice."

"She was perky.  Perky people get on my nerves."

Wufei laughed.  "As if you're one to talk."

"Shut up."  We smiled at each other.  Wufei used that to his advantage.

"When are you going to talk to Yuy about what happened?"

I glared at him.  "Never.  Why should I?  It was all his fault, anyway.  We both know that; if we tried blaming it on Quatre we'd end up falling all over ourselves.  I won't talk to him about it and you can't make me do it."

"Mm."  Wufei sighed, maybe because he knew I was right.  "You really should try to talk to him.  You know that just as well as I do."

"But I don't want to," I whined.  "And I'm not going to, no matter what.  I _might be willing to discuss things with him if he brings it up himself, but that's not going to happen."_

"I wonder if you would," he said thoughtfully.  "You seem to like living in the past, Duo.  You like to dwell on bad things from the past and ignore all the good things happening to you in the present.  And you don't like to hear things like this, either, but I hope you'll listen anyway."  He smiled.  "I don't want to offend you--I'm your best friend, and we both know that--but there are times when you can be really stupid."

I didn't say anything.

"How many jobs have you held in the past few years, Duo?  I'm not just talking about the ones you were fired from--I'm talking about the ones you quit, too.  How many has it been?  Nineteen?  Twenty?  More than that?  I know you've been keeping track."

"Twenty-three," I told him.  "I was fired from that awful cubicle job two days ago because the boss hated me.  He thought I was some sort of prostitute."

"Hm."  Then he went on.  "It isn't just the jobs, Duo.  You don't like to make new friends, you don't like to leave your apartment if you can help it, and you've left this colony only twice since you moved here.  One of those times was to get a physical check, and the other was the time Kyla and I got married.  You don't like to face reality, and that worries me."

"That doesn't mean anything.  I just haven't found my rut yet, you know?  It's no big deal.  I'm still young--there's plenty of time."

"You're twenty-two years-old, Duo, and you need to grow up.  You aren't fifteen anymore and you have to stop acting like you are.  I think that setting things right with Heero once and for all is the first step."  He settled back in his seat.  "Just think about it."

"Right, whatever."  I grabbed his wrist and checked the time on his watch.  "It's almost twelve-thirty, Wu-bear.  Do you want to grab Mike and get us some lunch?"

"My treat?"

"Nah, we can go back to the apartment complex and I'll whip something up."  I cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled over to Mike.  "Hey, kiddo!  Get over here!"

He appeared there in less than a minute, a little flushed in the face but grinning from ear to ear.  "Where are we going?" he asked.

"Back home.  It's lunchtime--provided you can stuff anything else into that ice cream-filled belly of yours.  You up for that?"

"Ahuh, but no broccoli, okay?  My dad always makes me eat that stuff, and I hate it."

I laughed.  "Fine.  No broccoli."

Wufei frowned.  "Where's your shoe?"

I looked at Mike's feet and started to laugh.  I couldn't help it; he just looked so lop-sided all of a sudden.  One foot had a shoe but no sock and the other foot had a sock but no shoe.  So I laughed.  What else was I supposed to do?

Well, it took us about half an hour to find Mike's shoe and sock (the sock was buried in the sand and his shoe was sitting underneath the deformed elephant slide), and then we went back to the apartment complex.  Then I found out that I had locked us all out, so we went up the fire escape and got in via Heero's bedroom window.  That was a fun trick.  Trust me on this one--you haven't lived until you break into someone's house using a fire escape and a rusty spoon.

Okay, so it took us a little while to get into the house, and when we did Mike and Wufei collapsed on the couch, as both had laughed themselves silly watching me try to open the window with a spoon.  While I started making the day's luncheon special, which was from a recipe I'd cut out of the newspaper once--I'd always thought it looked a little like Italian lasagna but it always ended up tasting more like some sort of French dish--they clicked the television on.  Guess what was playing?  Bulbo and Mindy.  And it was the same episode as before, too.

It was just as awful the second time around.  You can trust me on that one.

Wufei seemed almost disgusted by the show, and I couldn't blame him, but Mike spent the time humming along with the background music--which I hadn't noticed before--and pushing his cars back and forth across the rug.  It wasn't much of a melody--it just kept repeating itself over and over again, but it was catchier than the show was.  I was humming it along with Mike when the show ended.  Wufei, who had been cringing the entire time, either because I was off-key or because the show was that bad, breathed a sigh of relief.

"Lunch is almost ready.  You guys want to go wash up or something?" I asked.  "Mike, there's no way your hands are clean after playing in the park for that long, and, Wu-bear, I don't know where your hands have been.  Use soap!  Both of you!"  Jeez, I was starting to sound like a tired old housewife.  I guess that's what hanging around little kids and mean, philosophical, and crabby  Chinese people can do to you, huh?

By the time they had finally finished washing their hands--I sent Wufei back twice because his hands didn't smell like soap--lunch was ready and waiting on the table.  They practically inhaled it, not bothering to savor the magnificence that is my cooking at all.  Not that I'm one to talk--it didn't take me long to polish off a plateful either.

 Anyway, once we finished eating our delicious meals, Wufei offered to take us out to see a movie, which probably wasn't the smartest thing he had ever done, since Mike and I took him up on that offer.  I'm fairly sure he regretted it later.  We let Mike pick the movie, which delighted him, but we did have to refuse a few of his initial suggestions, since he didn't seem to understand why he wasn't allowed to watch movies with the letters "PG" and "R" printed next to them.  He didn't argue with us too much, though, and we eventually found a theater that was playing some weird cartoon movie.  We were the only ones in the theater.  I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to the thing, though Mike and Wufei were both engrossed in the colorful images and animated voices, but I think it was about a kid who ran away from home because his father was yelling at the dog or something.  I could be way off, though, since Mike later insisted that the whole movie had taken place on an alien planet.  Dogs, aliens…  It's all pretty much the same thing, right?

We were leaving the theater when Wufei's pager went off.  He and Mike had been having some sort of philosophical conversation about something silly like cardboard boxes when he just sort of jumped a little.  His pager was vibrating, so he took it out, excused himself, and meandered over to lean against the wall and call the number.  It didn't take long.  After about a minute, his face went sort of funny and his eyes got really big and he said a few choice words which Mike really shouldn't have heard.  Then he cut the person off, put away the cell phone, and came back to us.

"I've got to be going," he said quickly, frowning.  Upon closer inspection, he looked worried.

"Something wrong, Wu-bear?"

"That was Sally--she called to let me know that Kyla's in the hospital back home."  Wufei patted Mike's head absent-mindedly.  "I've really got to get back up there."

I frowned, knitting my brow.  "Is she having the baby?"

"Maybe.  Probably.  I think so.  Sally didn't go into much detail."  He looked around.  "Sorry.  I'll stay longer next time I'm up here and I'll call you once I get the chance.  It was nice meeting you, Mike," Wufei said, adjusting his glasses.  "I'll look forward to seeing you again."

"It was nice to meet you too, Wufei.  Thank you for taking us to see the movie and for buying us breakfast at the place where I got ice cream," Mike said solemnly.

Smiling vaguely at my best friend, I shooed him away.  "Get on, go.  If you've got to leave that bad, don't hang around here talking!"  Wufei was starting to get flustered and wasn't all that coherent anymore, but he nodded gratefully and ran full-speed to the nearest bus station that would take him to the shuttle stop.  Mike and I watched him leave.  Once he was out of sight, I turned to Mike and grinned.

"So did you have enough excitement for one day?  Are you ready to go back to your place and hang out for awhile?"

Mike considered my question for a long time, his face wrinkling, as though he was making a decision between life and death.  After a very long while, though, he nodded.  "Okay."  Then he put his hand in mine and smiled.  "We can go."

I squeezed his hand, trying to act like I was grown up and knew exactly what was going on in the world.  I think the two of us were both a little bit shaken up; it's not every day that one of your friends is forced to grow up in less than two seconds flat.  Seeing Wufei go from cool, calm, and collected to nervous, flustered, and anxious just like that…  It was a little disconcerting.

I think we were both thinking the exact same thing: I hope I never have to grow up.

**--to be continued--**


	5. Missing

CAUGHT BETWEEN THE BANISTER

Part Five: Missing

Disclaimer: don't own them.  Don't want them.  Don't need them.  I'll tell you if anything changes, but don't hold your breath.  Wouldn't want you to pass out or anything now, would we?

**Warnings/Rating: Not much here to speak of.  Maybe one or two hints of yaoi or shonen ai, if you're lucky.  This part is rated PG for a few four-letter words.  That's all.**

---

When Mike and I got back to the apartment, we didn't really feel like doing much of anything.  He was stuffed from the popcorn and such he'd eaten at the movies and I was just feeling pretty lethargic.  It had been a long day, and having Wufei rush off probably hadn't helped.  I guess the shock of realizing that Wufei had grown up since our days back in the war and left me all alone to fend for myself was a bit too much for me, you know?  It's weird how things you've known all along can suddenly hit you right between the eyes like that...

Anyway, once we got back we unanimously agreed that it was bedtime.  I helped Mike through his little rituals, digging around the cabinets for a new tube of toothpaste when he discovered he was out of his tasty kind, and then put him to bed.  I stayed up for a little while longer after that, staring at the wall and trying to read the newspaper, but I quickly gave up all pretense of wanting to stay awake.  Turning off the lights in the kitchen and making sure the door was locked, I retired to Heero's room and collapsed in the bed.  This time around, I didn't care what the place smelled like or reminded me of.  All I wanted to do was sleep.

So I did.  And I didn't wake up until eight o'clock the next morning, feeling a lot better and a little more refreshed.  I listened for Mike while I was stretching and scratching and didn't hear anything at all.  He was probably still snoozing the day away.  It had been a long day for him too, after all, and he had been pretty worn out last night.  I was personally amazed that such a little kid could handle so much activity!

I pressed an ear to Mike's bedroom door, wondering if he was moving around yet, but I didn't hear anything, so I assumed he was still sleeping.  After picking up some clothes out of my bag, I headed to the bathroom to take a shower and go about my business.  I probably took more time than was really necessary, but I didn't care.  The water felt nice and it wasn't exactly like I was the one who had to pay the water bill.  I used some of Heero's shampoo, just out of spite, and that made me grin.

Mike still wasn't out of his room when I got out of the bathroom, so I ran up the stairs to my own apartment to see if Wufei had left a message on my answering machine or anything.  He hadn't, although my landlord had left an ill-spoken threat for me.  I deleted it without even listening to it.  After that, I went back downstairs.  I passed one of my neighbors on the way and almost knocked her over by accident.  The cranky old bird shot me the finger.  Bitch.

Lounging on the couch, I turned the television on low and watched the news for a bit.  I never used to do that when I was younger--most kids and teenagers don't--but someone had gotten me into the habit.  There wasn't much going on in the universe that day.  A peace summit meeting was going on at some backwater colony, the location and name of which remained undisclosed.  A homosexual rights march had turned a bit violent back on Earth.  A woman on the Moon gave birth to a kid with three arms.  Nothing too unusual, you know?  After the news came on, I watched an old rerun of some classic television show that no one remembers anymore.  It was in black and white and the dialog was pretty corny, but I was grateful that it wasn't Bulbo and Mindy so I watched it anyway.

When eleven o'clock rolled around, I started to get a little concerned about Mike.  All right, all right, a lot a bit worried.  Little kids are usually up really early, right?  So why hadn't I seen hide nor hair of Mike since last night?

Getting up off of the couch, I knocked on the door of Mike's bedroom.  "Hey, kiddo?  You awake yet?"  When I didn't get an answer, I did what any normal person would do.  I knocked louder.  "Mike?"  There was still no answer, so I tried the handle, but it didn't move.  The door was locked.  Fuck.  What would a five year-old be doing that he wanted to lock the door of his room for?  A few thoughts came to mind, but I decided he was too young for any of them.

Where the hell did Heero keep his spare keys?

After looking frantically through some of the most obvious places I could think of, I finally found the key to the bedroom in a drawer by the front door.  I must have dropped it six or seven times just trying to unlock the door; the idea of what I would find in that room--or worse, what I _wouldn't_ find in that room--had me shaking uncontrollably.  Countless possibilities were going through my mind and I didn't like any of them.  What can I say?  I've got a really vivid and detailed imagination.

The door creaked when I finally managed to unlock it and push it open.  "Mike?" I called out quietly as I stepped into the room.  His bed was empty and it was neat, as though no one had even slept in it.  But I'd put Mike to bed yesterday and tucked him in and the whole spiel last night--hadn't I?  I was positive that I had.  I called out his name again, praying to God the Almighty that this wasn't really happening, that Mike was playing some sort of game and that he'd jump out to scare me at any moment.  I mean, Christ, where could he go?  There wasn't a window or anything in the room, just the door!

"Mike, this isn't funny," I said, searching the closet and under the bed and the corners and everywhere he could possibly be hiding.  I somehow broke the fire-engine nightlight in the process.  Once I'd destroyed the rest of the room, I started searching every inch of the apartment.  It took me an hour and a half of looking for the kid to see the little black box lying on the kitchen table and when I did see it I was almost afraid to find out what it was.  Picking it up carefully, I turned it around in my hands, examining it, only to discover that it was voice recorder, like the ones reporters used to have back in the pre-colony days.  I checked to see if it was rewound (it was) and then pressed the 'play' button, hoping the stupid thing would have the answers I was looking for.  The first things I heard were static and general everyday noises like 'thud', which almost made me give up.  And then Mike's voice came on.

"Hello?  Is this working right?  I hope so, because I can't write a note if it doesn't 'cuz I don't know how.  And I don't have a cell phone or anything and that wouldn't help anyway because I can't remember the apartment number.  So this had better work.

"Duo, you don't have to worry 'bout me!  The movie we saw yesterday with Wufei gave me a really good idea and so I'm going to leave until you promise to make up with my dad.  Or until he makes up with you.  I don't care, so long as you guys start being friends again.  I took the pizza money that he left us so I can buy food if I've got to and I made myself a peanut-butter sandwich.  I brought some of my toys so I don't get bored and you can tell my dad that I did remember my toothbrush and stuff so he won't get mad because my teeth are getting gross and are going to fall out.  And I've got more clothes in case it gets cold and extra socks.  It's all in my backpack with Bulbo on it, too.

"I'm sorry I locked the door in my bedroom, but I figgered you would look there first thing, so I had to make sure it would take you a little while to open it, in case you wake up right after I'm gone or something.  I don't think you will because you were snoring pretty good when I looked in, but it was just in case, you know?  I hope you didn't break my door, though, because I liked that door.  I don't know if you know where the keys are at."

If this kid lived through the wrath of the world, I was going to kill him.  The message continued.

"Don't forget to call my dad because he might not get home for a few days unless you call him and I don't think my sandwich is going to last for more than a day or two.  He probably won't like it when you call him but he'll be glad you did later on, I think.  And I think you'll both be happy later, when you start being friends again.  I've got my walkie-talkie for when you guys make up and stuff, so you can tell me when you're good friends again.  The other walkie-talkie is in the closet with my toy cars.  Bye!"

The thing clicked off a little while later and I threw it on the floor, cursing incoherently at it.  Fuck!  Where did this kid get these ideas, anyway?  The movie?  Hell, he was _never_ going to see a movie ever again if I had anything to say about it!

I did feel a little better, though, knowing that Mike hadn't been kidnapped or anything like that, but not by a whole lot.  There was still one vital fact remaining: Mike was all alone on a colony where kids weren't exactly welcomed with open arms and there was no way I could get a hold of him except via walkie-talkie.  I did check to see if I could actually get through to him through that stupid toy, but I suppose he was too far away and the signal was too weak.  The fact that I had no idea how to work the thing didn't help.  There was really only one thing I could do now.  Sighing miserably to myself, I crossed the room to pick up the phone and dialed Wufei's office number from memory.

What, you thought I was going to pick up the phone and call Heero?  Get real.  At the time, I wouldn't have called him if the apartment went up in flames.  Sure, a missing son was pretty fucking important, but I was going to try my damnedest to get Mike back without letting Heero know that I'd failed as a babysitter.  After all, it was a small colony and there weren't a lot of kids.  He would be easy to find, right?

Someone picked up the phone on the first ring.  "Preventer Headquarters."

I paused.  "You aren't Wufei," I observed brilliantly.  Noticing my surprise, the other person laughed and I couldn't help but smile.

"Congratulations, you get an A for the day!  His Excellency the dragon master is off on fraternity leave or something; his wife's in labor.  I'm filling in for the day.  Do you want to leave a message or anything?"

"You guys still call him the dragon master?  Damn, I'm impressed that it's lasted so long.  Well, listen, this is Duo Maxwell.  I used to work with you guys.  Who is this?"

"Officer Cathleen Dillon.  I remember you--short guy with the long braid, right?  Used to jump up on desks and scream at the ceiling fans when they got too loud?"

"Not quite so short anymore, but yeah, that would be me.  Look, Cat, I need to talk to Wufei.  It's really important--can you put me through to his cell phone or something?  Page him?  Anything?"

"I'm not sure; he gave instructions that he wasn't to be bothered, so he probably turned off his phone and pager.  If so, I won't be able to reach him."

"Fuck."  I thought a minute.  "How about the hospital phone?  Can you put me through to them and have them find Wufei?"

"That," she said, "I can do.  Hang on for a minute while I connect to the hospital."  The phone clicked and I drummed my fingers on the countertop as I listened to the corny holding music that was playing.  It took almost two full minutes for someone to pick up and, luckily, it was Wufei.

"What do you want, Maxwell?"  He sounded annoyed, anxious, and tired.  I guess I couldn't blame him for that one; his wife was having a kid and he had been pulled away from her to take a phone call.  I would have been pissed too.

"Wu-bear, hypothetical situation.  If you were a five-year-old boy who wanted to force his babysitter and his father to make up and be friends again, where would you go?  Given that you were really smart and that you lived, say... on my colony."

Wufei paused.  "You lost Mike, didn't you?"

"I didn't lose anybody!  I told you, it's a hypothetical situation!"

"All right.  Hypothetically, then, have you called this hypothetical young boy's father?  Or the local police?"

"No.  To both of those."

"Then you should do that first."

I frowned.  I'd had some awful run-ins with the police before, especially when I was little, but I still couldn't figure out why that hadn't occurred to me before.  "All right, I'll call the cops and see if they can help find him, but I'm not calling his father!  Or I wouldn't if this was actually happening.  It's all just hypothetical, you remember.  Really."

"Well then," Wufei said with a sigh, "I would say, hypothetically that you were being stupid about letting a petty argument get involved with something as important as a lost child.  Call Heero and tell him what happened.  It's his son, after all, and he deserves to know.  And he may be able to tell you where to look for the boy."

"Hypothetically, then, I would tell you to go fuck yourself."

Wufei laughed.  "I bet you say that to all the cute boys you meet.  Now stop wasting time and get to work finding that boy!"

"Whatever.  Hypothetically, Wufei, if you lost a five-year old kid and couldn't stand the idea of talking to his father, what would you do?"

"The right thing.  Good luck Duo."  He hung up, leaving me with a dial tone.  Sighing, I dialed another number.

Two rings this time.  "Colony V13B Police Department, twenty-seventh precinct," a woman said. I relaxed; she sounded friendly enough.

"Yeah, hi.  Um...  I'd like to report a missing person."  

You're giving me a funny look.  What, you don't think I was panicked enough?  I sounded a lot calmer than I felt, trust me on that.  Besides, I don't remember exactly what I said to her, so chances are that I fumbled my words and started ranting and raving like a psycho.  Just because I'm good with details doesn't mean I've got a mind like a bear trap.

The woman spoke again.  "All right.  Hang on and I'll transfer your call over to our missing person department."  The phone clicked and the woman suddenly turned into a computer, babbling the same thing over and over again.  "Your call is important to us.  Please hold.  Your call is important to us.  Please hold."  I guess even the repetition was better that the cheesy canned music the Preventers had used, but not by a whole lot.

It took almost ten minutes, but someone did finally cut the machine voice off in mid-sentence to pick up the phone.  "Missing persons," the man said.  Unlike the woman who had answered the phone before, this guy didn't sound friendly at all.  Just sort of bored, as though he didn't think this was worth his time.  Great.  Just my luck.

"I'm looking for a boy, about five years-old and he's--"

"A boy?  As in a little kid?" the man asked, interrupting me.

"Uh...  Yeah.  Five year-olds usually count as little kids.  He's got blond hair and--"

"A real live little kid?"

This guy was making interrupting me in mid sentence a bad habit.  I frowned.  "As opposed to the alternative, yeah, I sure hope so.  He's got blue eyes and he's sort of short and--"

"Is this a joke?"

Forget a bad habit, this guy had made interruption into an art form.  "Why the hell would I joke about a missing kid?" I asked, appalled.

The man snorted and I could picture the scene clearly: he would have his feet up on the desk with his paunch in the air and he'd be waving around a coffee cup or a donut as he spoke.  "No one around this colony has kids, buddy, and if they do then they keep closer tabs on them than they do on themselves.  These kids are kept under lock and key.  We have _never_ had a case where a missing person was younger than seventeen."

I scowled.  "There's a first time for everything, then, isn't there?  You can mark this day on the calendar and throw a party once a year.  With cake and beer, to make you lot happy.  Now look, the kid's name is Michael, he's five years old, and I have no idea where the hell he is.  Are you going to help me or not?"

There was a pause on the other end; I think the guy was momentarily stunned.  "You're serious?"

"What else was I supposed to be, exactly?"

"Well then, we'll need to take your name and address and see some recent photos of the boy.  Then we'll need to..."

I was on the phone with this guy for almost half an hour, working out the details, exchanging information, and occasionally fudging the facts.  When the conversation finally ended, though, I felt worse than I had before I called.  Two or three years ago, if this had happened, I probably wouldn't have cared!  It wasn't my kid--hell, he was the child of my archenemy!--and I would have been too busy worrying about my _own_ problems to care.  (The fact that I would have been drunk and singing bawdy songs about wheelbarrows also didn't escape me.)  But that wasn't the case now.  I'd grown attached to Mike; hell, I cared about the kid, in my own stupid way!  And, when the policeman had asked me about my relation to Mike, I'd told him I was the midget's uncle.  I'd also given them my address, not Heero's, which was probably good since the next question had been about my landlord's telephone number.  No matter how much of a bastard Heero was, he shouldn't be kicked out of his apartment just because I'd been irresponsible and hadn't been doing my job.  Not even he deserved that.

Christ, this was all my fault.

Feeling worse than I had in a long time, I picked up the list of phone numbers Heero had left with me just a few days ago and went upstairs, to my apartment, to wait for the police to arrive.  Once I was up there, I dialed the number to Heero's portable phone and waited.  No one answered, but his voice mail did click on after a moment or two.  I guess he'd turned off the phone and was taking messages instead.  I was glad for that, at least; I don't think I would have been able to tell Heero what had happened face-to-face without breaking down.  As it was, I took a minute to collect myself and then left my message.

"Hey, Heero.  Shit, I really hope you check your voice mail regularly…  Um, no one's dead and nothing's exploded, so I guess I'm not really supposed to be calling you or anything, but I figured you might want to get a call anyway.  No one's dead," I repeated, silently adding an 'I hope' to the end of that, "but there's been a bit of a problem.  You're going to want to come back as soon as possible, though--Mike's gone.  Seriously.  Sorry to bother you, but I figured you'd want to know.  I'll give you details when you get here--I'll be in my apartment.  It's on the floor above yours--4D.  That's all."  I hung up quickly, mentally slapping myself.  Why was it that everything seemed to happen to me?

No, I do _not_ think I'm being self-centered!  If I weren't acting like I was, then this wouldn't be much of a story, would it?  So just shut up and let me wallow in my pity, okay?

Anyway, now that I'd made all of the necessary phone calls, the only thing left for me to do was wait for the police to show up at the doorstep.  Of course, at this point it dawned on my that I didn't have any pictures of Mike handy, so I bolted back down the stairs, nearly knocking over another old lady who lived on my floor (she cursed and called me a mother-fucking punk) and started looking around Heero's apartment for a picture of the midget.  The only one I found was in one of Heero's desk drawers, carefully framed and hidden from sight.  He had obviously prepared for a very thorough investigation of some sort.  I guess that's what you get for being the nearly-perfect soldier for years on end.

Seizing the picture, I went back to my own apartment to wait for the police like I was supposed to do.  They showed up after a bit and gave me the third degree about where Michael may have gone and why he left in the first place.  I was super-careful about my answers and didn't say a word about Heero.  I guess it was all logical enough because after awhile I could tell that they actually believed that a five-year-old was missing and were ready to get to work.

After they left, taking the picture with them, I decided to conduct my own search, however brief it may have been.  It took me awhile, but I eventually found my way to the park again and tried looking around, even digging through the sand box in the hopes that he had buried himself in there for some reason.  I checked every nook and cranny in the whole area, looking for any place that was big enough to fit a small child--and some places that even Mike never would have been able to fit in.  But it was all in vain; I didn't find even a trace of him.  Disheartened, I returned to my apartment to wait some more.

It was nearly four hours later that my phone rang.  I raced over to pick up the receiver, praying that it was the police--or, better yet, Mike--but my hopes were quickly dashed when my landlord's face popped up on the video screen.  He didn't look happy.

"Duo Maxwell!" he bellowed when I answered.

"Hi, Benny."  In my head, I was cursing like a monkey on speed, but I forced myself to at least try and smile.  "What's up?"

"I'll _tell_ you what's up.  Guess what interesting tidbit of information I just learned today, Mister Maxwell?" he drawled, narrowing his eyes at me.  I really hate talking to Benny over the videophone; he has a _look_ that really gets to me.  His dark eyes scrunch up and his nostrils flare a bit, and his eyebrows come together.  It's his "you are in seriously deep shit" look and I tend to be on the wrong end of it a little too often for comfort.

"All right, I'll guess.  A goldfish has an attention span of three seconds," I tried half-heartedly.  "Was that it?"

Benny blinked, letting that sink in, and then he scowled.  "Whether or not that's true," he said, "that wasn't it.  No, I learned that you have a little boy living with you, but that can't possibly be right.  You see, Mister Maxwell, that apartment complex doesn't allow you to keep children.  So what explanation do you have for me?"

"For the kid?  Well, it's a long story.  You see, I bought him from a local dealer and I was really only saving him so I could make a decent stew, you know?  So he wasn't going to be around long anyway.  But I had to let him live in the apartment a little while because they're kind of chewy at that age and I didn't want to have to tenderize the meat too much.  But kids that age don't refrigerate well and--"

"_Mister Maxwell_!!!" roared Benny.  He obviously didn't appreciate my attempt at cannibalistic humor.  "May we please be serious about this?  You have violated one of the complex's major rules, and that cannot go unpunished!  What are you planning to do with the boy?"

I let the whole saving-him-for-later idea drop.  "Nothing.  I was just letting him hang around for a couple of days.  That's all."

"I was told that you are the boy's uncle."

"That's right."

Benny pursed his lips irritably.  "Your resident's profile says that you don't, to your knowledge, have any siblings.  Where are his parents and what relation are they to you?"

"I'm more like the kid's godfather, really.  I'm a good friend of the family; you know how that sort of thing works, right?"  It wasn't a lie, not really.  I had been a friend of Heero's, a very long time ago, and if Heero and I had never fought as we had, I damn well may have ended up being Mike's godfather or something.  Provided Heero had still left the group, met Stacey, and had a kid.

"And where _are_ his parents?"

I smiled weakly.  I couldn't joke my way around this one.  "Well, his mom is in some sort of mental institution, I think, or she's pretty damn close to moving into one.  And his dad is away on a business trip somewhere.  With a lot of guns with him."

Benny ignored that; he obviously thought I was only fucking around with him.  "Also, you're two months behind on your rent.  When do you actually intend to pay?"

Actually, I was three months behind on my rent, but I decided not to correct him on that one.  "Well, you see, I'm currently a little bit unemployed, so cash is a bit--"

"You're unemployed _again_?  Mister Maxwell, this is the fourth time this year!"

Actually, it was the sixth time this year.  But, again, I decided that it would be wiser just to let it go.  "It's not as if I can--"

"Do you realize," he interrupted, "that I have every right to come over and throw your scrawny ass out onto the street at this very moment?"

"I do now."  My heart sank.  This couldn't be good; Benny's scowl was getting worse by the second and his eyes did not look at all friendly.

"But I'm a nice man, Mister Maxwell.  I wouldn't throw a man out of his home just like that."

"Good.  I'm glad.  Seriously."

"I prefer to let them pack first.  It saves me from having to deal with those complications later on.  You have one week--that's seven days, Mister Maxwell--to vacate the premises.  If you and your nephew haven't moved out by then, I'll be forced to take legal action.  Goodbye."  Benny hung up then, leaving me to stare at the blank screen of the videophone with a look of unadulterated horror plastered over my face.

After a very long silence, I started to curse at the telephone.  And it was during an extremely creative and effective string of curses that I heard someone behind me clear their throat.  I froze.

"Who's there, how'd you get in, and how long have you been listening?"

"It's me," the voice said coldly.  "You left the door unlocked, and I've been here ever since you went from a catatonic state to an expletive marathon in less than two seconds flat.  What's going on here?"

I turned around and grinned sheepishly.  "You caught me at a bad time, Heero.  I take it you _do_ check your voice mail after all, then?"

"Yes, in fact, I do.  Quite often.  So explain exactly what you have done with my son!"

"Yeah, about that.  He's sort of not here right now, as you've probably noticed, and no one has any idea where he is."  Heero stared at me, either furious or completely dumbfounded, so I continued.  "I woke up this morning and he wasn't up yet but I didn't think that was a big deal because he was probably sleeping so I hung out a bit before I went to check up on him but his door was locked so I had to unlock it and he wasn't there so I started looking for him!  I found a tape he left behind saying he ran away until you and I got friendly, so I called the cops.  Then I left that message for you on your voice mail.  That was about five or six hours ago, and the police are looking and they promised to call the second they found something but I've been waiting for hours and I haven't heard anything from them!"

"Breathe," Heero reminded me.  Then everything I'd just said hit him.  "You _lost_ Michael?" he asked, staring at me as though I'd just grown another head.  I nodded, not daring to argue with him.  "How could you be so..." He held up a hand, stopping himself, and put his other hand to his forehead as though he had a really bad headache.  "No one has any idea where he is?" he asked, sounding considerably calmer than he had only five seconds previously.

"Not yet.  But this colony isn't all that big and there's good odds that he's just fine, right?"  He didn't answer me.  "You aren't mad?"  He shot me a look, so I explained myself.  "I mean...  Well, you aren't yelling or hitting anything and you haven't pulled out a gun and threatened to kill me yet, so..."

"Oh, I'm mad," Heero confirmed.  "In fact, I'm furious.  But that isn't going to help anyone just yet--I'll resort to violence and yelling _after_ I get my son back."  He wasn't joking; I could tell.  "Where are the police looking?"

"I told them to start looking at Stacey's place, but I don't think Mike would go there, do you?"  He shook his head.  "They said they'd scour the colony."

"What about the park on the west vector?  Are they going to look there?"

"Yeah, but I already looked, too.  Nothing."

"Damn it!" he swore, slamming his fist against the wall.  It cracked a little (the wall, not his fist).  Then he covered his face with his hands.  "How could I have been stupid enough to let this happen?" he asked no one in particular.  His voice was muffled and I was tempted to pretend I hadn't heard.  But I didn't.

"_I'm_ the one who lost him," I pointed out.  I stared out the window for a bit.  "If something happens to him, I'll never forgive myself."

I could tell that he really wanted to put all the blame on me, but he couldn't do it, just as I couldn't blame _him_ for this one.  Neither of us wanted to shoulder the blame, but who else was there to do it?  Mike, perhaps, but he didn't know any better.  And five year olds are too cute to blame stuff like that on.

It was actually kind of funny.  If you had given me the opportunity to ruin Heero's life a week before, I would have taken it in an instant.  But that was before I knew about Mike and before I'd been forced to see Heero again.  Now that I really had botched things up, I felt utterly miserable.

Heero started to pace the floor, arms crossed, back and forth in front of me.  I looked on cautiously, awaiting the inevitable storm.  It never came.

"When the landlord finds out about this..." he began, letting his voice trail off.  He stopped pacing for a moment to think about the repercussions that would bring.

"He already found out," I told him.  "But you don't have to worry about it--everyone involved right now thinks that Mike is my nephew."  I shifted uncomfortably as his gaze fell on me.  "Benny's kicking me out, but that's okay.  I'll stay over with Wufei and his family; they won't mind and he'll probably welcome the extra pair of hands.  Besides, it's about time I got off of this colony.  As long as you're twice as careful about Mike, you two should be absolutely fine.  For a while, at least."

Heero frowned at me.  "Why did you do something as stupid as that?  You didn't have to do it."

I shrugged and felt my cheeks grow a little warm with indignation.  "It seemed like the right thing to do.  That's all."

"It was a _foolish_ thing to do," he said sternly.  Then he paused momentarily.  "But thank you."

"Yeah."  Now that Heero had to admit that this wasn't entirely my fault, my guilt was slowly ebbing away and the old hateful resentment was taking its place.  But even that was slightly assuaged by my continuing worry for Mike.  Either way, that didn't mean I had to be overly nice to Heero, right?

Right.

There was an uncomfortable silence as Heero continued pacing around the floor.  After a while of watching him, I coughed pointedly.

"Look, you wearing holes into my carpet isn't going to get Mike back any sooner.  So why don't you go home and get settled in again and let me wait for the call?  I swear that I'll let you know when I hear something."

He considered me carefully.  I had the feeling he knew my real motive: to get him out so I wouldn't have to talk to him or look at him or anything like that.  Wufei's lecture the day before was really starting to get to me; as mad as I was with Heero, it occurred to me that maybe--just maybe--Wufei had made a good point.  Perhaps I was letting myself dwell a little too much on the past.  And I didn't want to have to stew over that while I was busy ignoring Heero.

"All right," he said finally.  "But I had damn well better receive a phone call or a knock on the door the second you hear something."

He let himself out, so I collapsed into a chair and started flipping through the television channels, waiting anxiously for the phone to ring or for someone to knock on my door.

**--to be continued--**


	6. Heero

CAUGHT BETWEEN THE BANISTER

Part Six: Heero

Disclaimer: don't own them.  Don't want them.  Don't need them.  I'll tell you if anything changes, but don't hold your breath.  Wouldn't want you to pass out or anything now, would we?

**Warnings/Rating: Not much here to speak of.  More than a few "hints" of shonen ai and yaoi.  There are a few psychological references, if you can catch them.  My usual insanity.  Fun stuff like that.  This part is rated R for a few four-letter words and some gratuitous romantic subplot type things.  Don't get too excited, though.  It's nothing major.**

---

It was early in the evening, almost thee hours after Heero's return and my landlord's uncouth phone call, before I heard anything from the police.  I jumped when the phone rang and bolted over to pick up the receiver, praying that it was good news.

"Hello?" I asked.

"Mister Maxwell, this is Officer Laytner from the precinct.  You have us looking for your nephew, right?"

"Yes!  Have you guys found him yet?"

"Nope.  But we did find a little toy car type thing by fifth and main.  Do you think it may be one of his?"

My heart sank.  "Quite possibly.  Was it an ambulance?  Or a fire truck?  Something--anything--along those lines?"

"Neither.  It was a dump truck--the kind dating back to pre-colony days.  Does it sound like one of his toys or anything?" Laytner asked.

"It could be."  If it had been any other colony, I would have dismissed it as a coincidence.  However, the chances of finding a toy car on _this_ colony, especially only three blocks away from the apartment...  Well, those chances were pretty slim.  "So what are you guys going to do now?" I asked, biting my lip.

"We'll keep looking for about three days.  After the first twenty-four hours, we'll intensify the search.  If he hasn't turned up after the three days are up, we'll cease the active search.  We'll keep sending his name and pictures to news stations and the papers and all of that.  But he's only a runaway, really, and he's little, so he'll probably come back all on his own.  Most runaways do.  I wouldn't worry too much about it, if I were you.  Call us if he comes back on his own.  We'll bring him home if we find him, though, so you don't have to sit by the phone.  If you aren't home when we bring him over, we'll just leave you a note and let him stay at the station for a bit."

Well, that was better than nothing, right?  "Thanks," I said half-heartedly.  Then I hung up, still unhappy and no more optimistic than I had been only a few hours before.  Once I managed to collect myself again, I went downstairs to tell Heero what Officer Laytner had said.

Hesitating only slightly, I knocked on the door to his apartment.  It was a really pathetic knock, too, all timid and frightened.  I hate it when people knock like that, but I was too busy trying to figure out how I could shoot myself and make it look like an accident to worry about it at the time.  Heero answered quickly and let me inside without a word.  If I hadn't known any better, I would have thought that he'd been crying; his eyes were red and a little bit puffy.  But that wasn't possible, right?  Guys like Heero didn't actually have real feelings.  He probably just had something in his eye.

"Have you heard anything?" he asked.

"Sort of.  The cops found a toy car--a dump truck--a few blocks away, over by Fifth Street.  They're still looking, though, and they'll bring him up to my apartment if they find him.  We're supposed to wait.  That's all we can do, I guess.  Wait, I mean."

"Wait," he repeated dully, almost as if he had never heard the word before in his life.

"'fraid so."  He let out a frustrated noise and I frowned, trying to translate it.  "Ease up, man.  I want him to be back here just as much as you do, but if--"

"No," he interrupted.  "No, you can't possibly want him back as much as I do.  Don't pretend that you do because I don't want to hear it."  He glared at me.  "You have no idea what I want right now or what I'm going through.  You have no idea how I'm feeling or what's been going through my mind for the past several hours.  _You have no idea_."

I looked away, not willing to argue with him and not exactly willing to back down.  I did have an idea what he was going through--I _did_ understand.  That kid was undoubtedly one of the best--and worst--things that had _ever_ happened to me.  But Heero didn't need to know that.

A long and uncomfortable silence crept over us before Heero stepped towards the kitchen.  "I'm making coffee.  Do you want any?"

"Yeah, that would be great.  Thanks."  I stood awkwardly in the middle of the hall as though I had never been in his apartment before in my life.  All of a sudden it didn't feel like I had been living there for the past few days.  Even the sight of my overnight bag by the couch didn't make me feel more at ease.  It just didn't make any sense to me at all.

Heero puttered around the kitchen for a bit, adding more water and coffee grounds to the machine.  He had obviously been starting the process when I had knocked because the tin of grounds was still on the counter and there was water spilled on the counter, near the sink.  I watched him pour more water in the machine and saw that his hands were shaking, just enough for me to notice.

He eventually looked over at me and frowned.  "Do you intend to stand there all day or do you plan on sitting down at all?"

"Um...  Well, sitting is good.  Where should I sit?"

Shaking his head, Heero shrugged.  He obviously thought I was the stupidest man alive.  "In a chair, I suppose.  That usually works out well.  Try it.  You'll like it."

Feeling more than a little stupid, I did as I'd been told.  There was a long silence as Heero continued working in the kitchen.  Then, after a while, Heero handed me a mug of coffee.

"Do you want anything in it?" he asked.  "Cream?  Sugar?  A touch of Irish?"

I managed to grin.  "How sweet--you remembered.  But no, thanks.  I don't add anything to my coffee anymore, really.  And I never ever touch the Irish."

"That's good."  He sat down across from me, cradling his own mug.  There was another long silence, so I sipped from the coffee, more to avoid talking or looking at him than anything else, but I burned my tongue and pulled off quickly.

"It's hot," I told him.

"Coffee usually is."  He sipped from his own mug and I saw his eyes widen slightly.  "Mm," he admit, "it is too hot."  He set his mug down on the table.  "More so than usual."

"Told you."  I started looking nervously around the room, trying to find something to talk about.  "You really keep a clean house, don't you?" I asked finally.  "Real neat.  I could never do that--heck, you've seen my apartment.  Looks like a hurricane whipped through it or something, right?  Right."  I didn't give him a chance to answer.  "I mean, I could probably keep it clean if I wanted to, but I've got enough trouble just finding the time and all, you know?  What with finding a new job and the AA meetings and the random colony--"

"Shut up."

"Shutting up."  I sipped from the coffee, being super careful not to burn myself--a failed attempt, but at least I tried.  The silence that fell over us was an uncomfortable one.  I suppose that really was to be expected, wasn't it?  I mean, we hadn't sat down to have a civil conversation in over six years and our last chat hadn't exactly ended on friendly terms.  The fact that Heero's son was missing probably only added to the stress...

"Maybe I should go back up to my apartment," I said finally, shifting in my seat.  "I've got a lot of packing to do and all.  So I think I'm just going to--"

"Not yet," he interrupted.  He didn't say anything else.  I shrugged, cradling my mug in both hands and trying to ignore the awkward silence that had suddenly crept up and camped there.  It didn't work all that well.  Ignoring the silence, I mean.  The more I tried to ignore it the more obvious it became.  Go figure.

Heero sighed, picked up his coffee cup, and then set it back down.  It was still mostly full.  Of course, so was mine.  I was too nervous to drink anything.  Nervous about Mike, nervous about me, nervous about Heero...  I probably would have choked on the damn coffee if I had tried to swallow any of it right then.  I wondered if Heero felt the same way.  For some odd reason, I doubted it.  Heero was never nervous.

"So, um...  How have things been for you lately?  Before I showed up on your doorstep, I mean."

"Good," he said quickly.  "They've been good."

"Yeah.  That's... good."  We lapsed into yet another silence.  This one was even longer.  Heero kept looking at the phone, willing it to ring on command or something, and I started to drum my fingers against the coffee mug.  It was a nice looking mug, so far as that sort of thing goes.  It was a light blue--not a girly blue, though--and had something written on it in Latin.  "E Pur Si Muove."  Below that, in smaller letters, it said: "but not until after it's had coffee."  All the o's in there were tiny little models of the Earth.  It was a real neat mug.  I wanted one.  I even considered asking Heero where he had gotten it, but decided against it.  Sure, it would have provided some sort of conversation piece, but it was hardly appropriate, really.  Not right then.

A clock was ticking, rather loudly, in another room.

"How did your business trip go?" I asked finally.

"I don't know," he answered.  "I had to leave before the job was fully complete."  He paused, thinking of something to say.  "Did you and Michael enjoy yourselves?"

"Yeah, he was great.  Real great.  You're lucky to have him."  He nodded--he knew that already.  There was another long pause between topics.  What did people talk about in movies when there was nothing really interesting to talk about?  Oh, right...

I faked a grin.  "So, crazy weather we're having lately, huh?"

"We live on a colony," Heero pointed out dryly.  "There is no weather."

"Oh.  Right.  In that case, how about this crazy weather we're not having lately, eh?" I amended.

Heero snorted.  "Baka."

"That would be me, all right."

We looked at one another and smiled.  That was a start.  Starts were good.  Or at least they were usually good.  This time, however, no progress was made, so in the long run this start was not good.  Yet another silence lapsed over us, smothering us.

After what seemed to take hours, Heero sighed.  "Let's get this over with.  If you're anything as I remember you, you've been holding a grudge against me for a long time now.  So hurry up and start yelling or whatever it is you want to do so that we can get that out of the way and I can focus on more important things."

I couldn't say anything at all for a quite some time.  What exactly was there to say now?  Over the years I must have pictured that moment a million different ways, but I don't think I had ever expected him to go right out and tell me to yell at him.  And, to top it off, he wasn't exactly being the most civil person in the world right then, nor was he giving off a very receptive aura.  And how exactly are you supposed to start a conversation like that?  It's not exactly appropriate to go "it's all your fault, so you'd better start apologizing" or to start by saying "well, I'm sorry you're such an asshole, but..." And you can't really apologize for something you didn't really do without sounding totally hypocritical.  So I just didn't say anything.

Hey, I saw that.  Don't roll your eyes at me.

Anyway, Heero eventually gave up and threw his hands in the air.  "Whatever.  I'm tired of this!  Who cares?  It happened so long ago that I doubt we even remember exactly what happened!"

"Who cares?" I repeated incredulously.  "Who _cares_?  I'll tell you who cares!  I care!"

"Then why haven't you said anything about it?" Heero asked in a frustrated tone of voice.  "Look, I didn't do anything wrong!"

"Yeah, right," I muttered.

Heero scowled.  "It was part of the mission."

"Leaving me there to die was part of your mission?"  I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at him.  "I get it.  I was expendable.  After all, I was just an orphan boy with a gun and a slight problem with his libido!  So what?  Who in their right mind fucking cares about a silly thing like that, right?  Just because you left me there to die doesn't mean a god-damned thing, does it?"

Heero slammed the palm of his hand against the table.  "God damn it, Duo!  I didn't know you were in trouble and Quatre was defenseless and needed help!  If I had known the rifle I gave you was dysfunctional, I wouldn't have left you behind!"

"Liar," I snarled.  "You _did_ know that the bomb didn't work.  And you knew about the sniper, too, but all you left me with was a dud gun!  Quatre told me that you knew!"

"I knew that one of the rifles was not working properly, but I didn't know which one.  The chances of me giving you that one were one in one hundred!  And I had a feeling that there was something still there--I told you to be careful when I left!"  He sighed, running a hand through his hair.  "Look, no one is perfect, okay?  I spent all that time while you in the hospital kicking myself for having left you alone there.  It was a mistake.  I know it was a mistake.  But there was nothing I could do to fix it!"

"You left me there with no weapon and some guy fucking shot me!  I almost died!"

"It was a mistake!" he insisted.  Then he pulled back.  "And I knew you were going to hold it against me.  You hold grudges forever."

I glared at him.  "I would have forgiven you for it eventually," I said, "but you didn't say goodbye."  I lowered my voice to something barely more than a hiss.  "You should have at least said goodbye."

"I know."

"I could have _died_."

"But you didn't."

"No thanks to you."

"Let me also point out that you shot me--multiple times, actually--on the day we first met."

I narrowed my eyes.  "Two major differences there.  One, I thought you were going to hurt Relena, and I've never been one to promote domestic violence.  Two, we weren't fucking sleeping together at the time!"

He scowled in response.  "That was the first mistake I made, then."

I started.  "What?"

"Sleeping with you was a mistake.  I should have known better.  We never should have tried to be more than friends; it just wasn't worth it to have all those romantic ties mixed in with our professional lives."

I scowled.  "You are such a fucking bastard!"

"And you're a needy, selfish, petulant little slut!"

I growled.  "You take that back."

"You first," he replied smoothly, picking up his mug and taking a long sip from it.  I glared at him from across the table, and then leaned over the table to point my finger at his face.

"I swear, if you weren't such a--"

I was interrupted by a kiss.

I don't know how it happened, really.  One minute we were yelling and screaming at each other, more than ready to attack and go for the other person's throat if the situation presented itself, and the next minute we were locking lips.  I'm still not sure who kissed who--did I make the first move or did he?  It just sort of _happened_.  And the strangest thing of all was that I definitely sort of liked it. Talk about a major shift in the mood, there.

Heero's hands lightly circled my arms, just above the elbows, as he gently pulled me further towards him.  I was practically laying on top of the table now, but I didn't care.  I dove my fingers into his hair as I kissed him back.  It was euphoria.  It was sublime.  It was...

Over.

I shoved him away, backing off of the table.  "What the hell?" I cried.  "What the fuck did we just do?  What happened?"

Heero shrugged, running a finger over his bottom lip, sort of massaging it a little.  "We kissed."

"Thank you, Captain Obvious.  I think I could have figured that one out on my own."

"Then why did you bother to ask?"  Heero frowned.  "I think you meant to ask why that just happened.  And the answer to that is I have no idea."

"Fuck.  Where did you learn to kiss like that?"

"I was married at one point or another, in case you've forgotten," he answered, a touch perturbed.  "What's your excuse?"

"Step-by-step instructional videos," I told him, passing it off as a joke.  The real answer was that I'd had more than a few people to practice on over the years, but he didn't need to know that.

He sighed.  "That shouldn't have happened."

"No, it shouldn't have," I agreed.  We caught each other's eye and flushed, quickly looking away from one another.  I picked up my mug again.

"The coffee got cold," I observed brilliantly.  "I'm... uh... going to the kitchen.  To heat it up."  I went towards the kitchen, but he grabbed my arm as I passed, making me drop the mug.  It shattered on the floor, which was a shame, and the sludgy brown liquid spilled and started soaking into the carpet.  That was going to stain, but I really don't think he cared.  Then he yanked me down to his level and kissed me hard on the mouth, biting my lips and attacking me.  I wanted to run away or push him or something, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it.  And once his tongue found a way to slip into my mouth, I was hooked.  All thoughts of escaping vanished, disappearing as though they'd never been.

"Shit," I groaned against his mouth once I'd been given the chance to catch my breath.

Heero snorted, obviously amused, and rested his forehead gently against mine.  "Is that a good shit or a bad shit?"

"I don't know," I answered honestly.  "Do it again and let's find out."

He seemed to be satisfied with that answer and proceeded to attack my mouth again, releasing my arm and sliding a hand underneath my shirt.  I took refuge in his lap, sitting comfortably as he played with the nubs of my nipples and carefully explored my mouth.  My hands traveled down to the waistband of his pants, tugged at his belt, and eventually learned how to undo the buckle.  Once I'd managed to invade the inner regions of his pants, he pulled away, releasing my mouth.

"To the bed?" he asked hoarsely.

"Couch is closer."

He shook his head.  "I've lost more things in those couch cushions than I care to count."

I decided not to bother asking him about that one.  I got out of his lap and led him to the bedroom, avoiding the spilt coffee on the floor.  We were shedding our clothes as we went, dropping shirts and stuff all over the floor.  He followed without protest and shut the door behind us.

And this is where I'm going to pause this story and fast-forward for a bit.  Sorry, but I'm not one to fuck and tell, and it seemed like you were enjoying this story just a little too much.  Seriously, you need to get out a little more.

Anyway, a good bit of time passed.  I was laying next to Heero in his bed, propped up on one elbow and twirling my fingers in his hair for really no reason at all.  His hair was a little bit oily and stiff because of the hair gel he had been using, but I didn't mind too much.  It could have been worse, after all.  He was just looking up at the ceiling with a small smirk on his face, and I decided this was the perfect time to get some answers to those questions that had been roaming around in my mind for a long while.

"Hey, what's the deal with you and Stacey, exactly?"

Heero's smirk turned into a frown and he tilted his head back slightly to look me in the face.  "What do you mean?"

"Well, how did you get together in the first place?  What happened between you?  Why did you two separate?"  I tugged on a lock of his hair, not asking the one question I really wanted answered.  "I want details, buddy, and long stories, and you're going to be the one delivering the goods, kapeesh?"

He sat up and looked at me, his blue eyes wide.  "I don't like to talk about her, you know."

"That's nice.  Talk about her anyway."

"Hm."  It wasn't so much of a grunt as it was a groan, his way of giving in without putting up much of a fight.  I smiled, moving closer to him.  It was a start; I considered anything that wasn't a curse or an expletive to be a good thing at that point in time.

"Please, Heero?"

Heero sighed.  "Stacey and I met a little under six years ago, right after you were put up in the hospital and I left.  She was beautiful and I was confused and stupid."

"And you had sex.  Okey dokey.  So where did you meet her?"

"A bar."

That made me pause.  "You were in a bar?" I asked, lifting an eyebrow.

"Yes.  Do you want to hear about this or not?" he asked.  I gestured for him to go on and, after a minute, he did.  "We got married about two months later and Michael was born about six months after that."

I did some quick math.  "But--"

"He was a month premature.  And yes, she was already pregnant when I married her."

"Still, are you sure that Mike's really your kid, then?  I mean, do you have any idea where Stacey had been before you came around?"

Heero snorted.  "I'm not even sure where she went after I came around, to tell the truth.  No, I'm not entirely positive that Michael is my blood son, but does that really matter very much?"

It didn't and I told him so.  Besides, Heero's math had never been very good in any case and there was a distinct possibility that he was messing it up enough as it was.  I waited for him to continue with the story.

"Not to long before Michael was born, I started to realize that there was something seriously wrong with Stacey, but she refused to go see a doctor.  After Michael was born, things only got worse.  She suffered from hallucinations and would talk to people who weren't there.  And then there were the delusions of grandeur...  She was convinced that she had given birth to some sort messenger from the heavens or--"

"The next Messiah?" I inquired.

"That was it.  And she eventually convinced herself that I was trying to hurt Michael and started to become violent.  I put up with it for as long as I could, but three years of it was just too much.  I forced her to see a psychiatrist, he registered her for the colony's best mental institution, and I filed for a divorce.  Things have improved since then, I suppose.  Stacey visits us once or twice a year and Michael and I live happily by ourselves for the rest of the time."

"Well, I guess that explains that," I said.  "Now tell me why you didn't bother to contact any of us and tell us where you were after you left!"

Heero frowned at me.  "Do we really need to get into that again?"

"Well, let me think.  Yes."  I sat up and started stretching.  "You don't just fuck someone and then leave them behind without saying anything, even if you did just leave them in a strange place to die, all alone and miserable."

"Oh, please."  Heero rolled his eyes.  "Before we start that up again, do me a favor and explain something to me.  When I left, you were one of the heaviest drinkers I'd ever met.  What finally convinced you to quit?"

I ran my fingers through my hair.  "Long story, I guess.  After I quit the Preventers I started roaming, going from colony to colony and suddenly came to realize that maybe the reason I couldn't get a steady job was that I kept on coming to work with either a hangover or a hip flask.  Besides, Wufei was nagging me about giving up the bottle and I was getting sick of it.  So I shacked up with Wufei for a little while, joined a twelve-step program, and made sure Wu-bear kept me on track.  Not that it helped matters much--you know what my job record has been like."

"Right.  About that, why did you take a job with the Michino--"

I held up a hand.  "Don't go there.  I mean that."

"All right, I suppose that's fair."  Heero stretched out his arms.  "So you've quit drinking and can't keep a steady job.  What else has changed?"

"Nothing with me.  Wufei got married, though, and his wife supposedly went into labor last night.  Poor guy is probably going through hell."

Heero nodded.  "I know how that is.  If you happen to see any of my clothes over there, do me a favor and throw them over to me, will you?"

"I think I see your pants," I responded, leaning over and picking them up.  "Here you go."

"Thank you."  Heero took them from me.  "Do you think the police have found Michael yet?"

"You really know how to spoil the mood, don't you, Heero?  Your kissing skills may have improved--not to mention your bedroom etiquette--but you really have to work on the whole tact and subtlety thing, okay?"

"Well, I'm sorry, but it's a little bit difficult to forget the fact that my son is lost somewhere on this godforsaken colony!  Forgive me if I seem a little bit preoccupied!"

I smiled, turning back towards him and circling my arms around his neck.  "That's weird, Heero, because, you know, you didn't really seem all that preoccupied while we were doing bedroom aerobics, if you know what I mean.  And I'm willing to bet I could take your mind off of things for a little while longer."

He pushed me away, none too gently.  "No.  I'm not entirely sure we should have gone ahead and done that in the first place, Duo.  I'm glad we're speaking again, but maybe this was going a little bit too far.  Again."

I scowled at him.  "Is that so?  Funny, that.  You seem to say that a lot about a lot of people--if I didn't know any better, I would swear that you were asexual or something."

Heero frowned.  "I'm going to choose to ignore that.  But I'm serious, Duo.  Do you think the police have found him?"

"I don't know.  But you know, I think we'd hear them coming up the stairs or something on the way to my apartment, don't you?"

"Not if they took the elevator up."

I shook me head.  "Nah, they shut the elevator off this morning, didn't you know?  Some stupid old lady did something to the fuses and wires or something yesterday, so the building shut it down this morning for some repairs."

"I forgot about that; there was an out of order sign on it when I got back.  When is it supposed to start working again?" Heero asked.

I shrugged.  "I don't know.  Whenever they get it fixed, I guess.  Why do you ask?"

"Because I hate using the stairs."

I laughed.  "You are such a dork.  Maybe that stair thing runs in your family or something; Mike's not all that fond of--" I stopped.  "Oh my god."

"Excuse me?" he asked, looking over at me.  "What's wrong?"

"I think I may know where Mike is," I said.  "Come on, get dressed.  I think I may need your super soldier abilities in a minute or two."  With that, I rushed out the bedroom door and started rooting through the closet where Mike kept all his toys.  Heero followed me out, replacing his clothes as he went.

"Duo, what are you--"

"I think he's in the elevator."

Heero leaned over my shoulder to see what I was doing.  "What makes you say that?"

I looked over at him pointedly.  "They shut the elevator off early this morning, right?  Maybe it was around the time Mike ran away!  It would explain why no one has heard hide nor hair of him on this colony.  What if he's trapped in that elevator?"

Heero frowned.  "Wouldn't they check the elevator before the shut off the power?"

"Maybe, but I doubt it.  In this shabby place?  Please.  They didn't even know about Mike until all of this mess started, if that tells you anything at all.  They just don't bother in a place like this."

"I suppose," Heero agreed.  "But the chances of him being in the elevator would be almost a hundred to--"

"Heero, forget about all the numbers for a minute, okay?  It was sort of kinky in the bedroom, but now it's just dumb.  Christ, what are you, an accountant?"

"Hardly."  He frowned.  "Anyway, let's just pretend, for one minute, that he_ is_ in the elevator.  How are you going to determine what floor the elevator is on?"

I smiled, pulling something out of all the stuff I'd managed to throw on the floor.  "Easy," I replied, holding up a walkie-talkie.  "I'll use this.  It should work, right?"

"I suppose it will, provided he has the other one with him."

"Good.  Come with me."  I started to lead him out, but Heero stopped me.

"Duo..."

"What, don't you want to see if we can find your son or not?"

"Yes, but don't you think you should get dressed first?" he asked me.

I looked down at myself and grinned.  "Nah.  None of the old ladies who live here are going to care at all if I start walking around in the nude."

"Put on your clothes," he insisted, pushing me back towards the bedroom.  "And then we'll go check and see if he's in the elevator."

I had the feeling he was humoring me, but that was all right.  After I got dressed, Heero and I went out into the hallway towards the elevator shaft, where I flicked the walkie-talkie on.  "Hi-ho, hi-ho!  Duo Maxwell calling for one Michael Yuy.  Do you copy?"

There was nothing but static.

Heero sighed.  "See, he's not in there.  It was a ridiculous idea in the first place."

"Hey, ease off!  We may just be too far away.  Let's go down a floor or two and then try it again."

He agreed, albeit reluctantly, and so we went down the stairs to the next floor, and then the one after that, although with no luck.  So we finally went down to the first floor.

"Mike, you there?"

Static, again.

Heero frowned.  "I told you this was a--"

"Dad?"  Both of us stared at the walkie-talkie again, wide-eyed.  I held it up to my mouth again.

"Mike?"

"Hi, Duo!"

Heero tapped my shoulder.  "Duo, that's not the walkie-talkie," he told me.  The two of us turned around to see Mike standing between two police officers with a big grin on his face.

"Are you two friends again?" he asked.

Heero didn't answer the boy, but he did get on his knees and envelop him in a huge bear hug.  Then he pulled away, scowling.  "Don't you _ever_ do that again!" he reprimanded sternly.  "What if someone had taken you away or if you'd gotten hurt?  What if I hadn't come back?  What would have happened if no one had found you?"

"Sorry," Mike said quietly, staring at his feet.  "I just wanted you and Duo to be friends again, that's all."

I frowned.  "Mike, running away is definitely not the best way to go and make us be nice to each other.  You're smart enough to know that.  And you scared the hel--heck out of me!  Do you know how freaked out I was when I woke up and saw that you weren't anywhere around?"

"I'm sorry," he said again.

"You had better be," Heero told him, "and you had better be ready to for a severe punishment."  He seemed to notice the officers standing in the doorway then and coughed, standing up with Mike still in his arms.  I could tell that he was more relieved than he was angry, no matter what he was saying.  "Thank you two for bringing him back."

"No problem," the dark-haired officer replied.  He turned to me.  "Mister Maxwell, I'm Officer Laytner; we talked on the phone.  And this is my partner, Officer Maclean.  We found Michael here wandering around a café a few blocks away."

"Thanks so much, you guys."

"No problem," Officer Maclean responded with a kind smile.  "It was a pleasure doing business with you, Mister Maxwell."  They left then, leaving the three of us to our own devices.  We went towards the stairs and headed back up to Heero's apartment, where Heero sent Mike to his room, just to sit there, while he thought of something to do, and I just sort of hung out for a little while.

Night fell after a while and Mike decided he wanted to go to bed, but that Heero had to read him a story first.  So Heero went into the kid's bedroom, leaving me out there by myself, which was okay.  After a little while, I got bored and I peered in through Mike's bedroom door.  Mike was leaning against Heero, fast asleep.  Heero had one arm wrapped around the boy and the other holding a book in his lap, reading it softly aloud, seemingly oblivious to Mike's currently unconscious condition.  He turned a page.

"And on this page you see a little girl giggling at a hippopotamus," he read.  "I wonder why."  It was strange, really, that he put more emotion into reading those sentences aloud than he put into regular conversation.  It was still obvious that he was reading straight from the text, but there was a lot more of something in that recitation than there was in Heero's everyday life.  A lot more of _Heero, maybe._

I cleared my throat quietly but Heero didn't even look up at me.  He flipped to the last page.  "The magic medicine worked," he said softly as he stood up, laying Mike on the bed.  The book was set on a dresser and Heero bent to kiss Mike's forehead.  I decided to let myself out and head back up to my own apartment.

Don't get me wrong!  All the feelings and stuff were really sweet, really, but they made me feel a little uncomfortable, especially watching Heero tuck his son into bed.  Maybe it was only then that all of this struck home--Heero was a father, Wufei was a husband, and I was probably the only one of the old Gundam pilots who still didn't have anyone in the world to care about them.  They had all gotten on with their lives and forgotten about the war while I had stewed in my apartment and tried to avoid society in general.  It's things like that which really make you wonder.  If I wanted to get all symbolic over it I could say that my life had somehow managed to trap me between a banister--for a while I'd had a purpose but then it had all stopped and I'd kind of imprisoned myself somewhere, like a banister.

The only good thing about that comparison that I could see was that people _did_ eventually find a way to get out of the banister.  Usually.

Why couldn't I be that lucky?

Anyway, my apartment, when I went inside it, felt really empty.  I guess I had gotten used to staying with other people, especially kids, and not my one-person home was starting to seem a little lonely.  I was tempted to drag my old television out of the bathroom, just for the sake of the noise, but I didn't.  I called Wufei's cell phone instead, sighing to myself.

"Chang Wufei," he answered with a grunt.

"Glad you turned your phone back on," I said with a smile.  "Long day?"

"Maxwell?"  I heard a bit of shuffling in the background but I couldn't see it because he was on his cell phone, which meant there was no picture on his end.  "Did you find Mike?  How are things going back on the colony?"

"I should be asking you that last one, not the other way around.  How is Kyla doing?  Do you have a kid there yet?"

"Not yet.  Soon, we hope.  I'm on my dinner break, sort of.  Kyla's busy with her labor pains and I'm trying to eat something with a broken hand."

"She broke your hand?"

"She may as well have," Wufei replied with a grunt.  "Those injuries I suffered during the wars were _nothing_ compared to this.  Why are you calling?"

"Because it's lonely around here," I told him.

"Lonely?  What, you didn't find Mike?"

"No, Mike's back.  But it's sort of late at night and he's at home, safe in bed."

Wufei, upon hearing that, paused.  "And where are you?"

"My own apartment.  I finally gave in and called Heero, so he's back now.  He has every intention of punishing Mike for running away like that and that's that.  I didn't feel like hanging around the place anymore.  It would have been way too awkward."

"Why's that?  What happened, Duo?"

"Oh, you know.  The usual.  We argued, had sex, and then went our separate ways."

"I see.  And so you--Wait.  You and Heero had sex?"

"Yup."

"Well."  Wufei paused for a moment.  "Was it good?"

"Wu-bear..."

"All right, all right.  I know better than to pry into your sex life.  So obviously you two have worked out a few of your issues and have kissed and made up, correct?"

"Not exactly.  We sort of just skipped over the whole working out our differences part and went straight to the whole making out bit, to tell you the truth.  I don't think I can stay here anymore, Wu.  I'm not quite as pissed at Heero as I used to be, but I really don't think I'll be able to face him anymore."

"Why not?"

I sighed.  "Because I've done a lot of thinking and I realized that I've been doing things wrong.  And the landlord is kicking me out of my apartment soon anyway, so I might as well just leave.  I'm going to buy a shuttle ticket and get out of here, once and for all.  It's time to move on with life, you know?"

"I understand.  If you need a place to stay, you are certainly welcome to stay with me, Kyla, and the new baby, if it ever gets around to popping out.  You'll be on diaper duty, but...  Ah.  Speaking of which, I think Kyla is summoning me back so she can break my other hand."

"Thanks, Wu.  I'll keep that in mind.  I hope Kyla gets over this quickly.  Have fun."

"Right, fun.  I'll talk to you sometime soon, right?"

"Of course.  Bye, Wu."

"Goodbye."

He hung up then so he could get back to his wife, leaving me to figure out what I was going to do next.  I knew I had to get out of that apartment complex, if not get out of the colony all together, but I didn't know where or how I was going to do it.  I had to get away from Heero.  I had to get away from this colony.  Everything just reminded me of my past, which was exactly what I had decided I needed to get away from in order to free myself from my own metaphorical banister.

**--to be continued--**


	7. The Banister

CAUGHT BETWEEN THE BANISTER

Part Seven: The Banister

Disclaimer: don't own them.  Don't want them.  Don't need them.  I'll tell you if anything changes, but don't hold your breath.  Wouldn't want you to pass out or anything now, would we?

**Warnings/Rating: Not much here to speak of.  More than a few "hints" of shonen ai and yaoi.  There are a few psychological references, if you can catch them.  My usual insanity.  Fun stuff like that.  This part is rated PG-13 for a few four-letter words and some gratuitous romantic subplot type things.  Don't get too excited, though.**

---

Mike came by the next morning.  I hadn't gotten around to sleeping the night before, so I'd been awake for a while and I'd been doing a lot of packing.  I was running out of things to put into boxes and was trying to decide if I wanted to bother cleaning up or not when Mike knocked on the door.

"Hi, Duo!" he said cheerfully, greeting me with a grin.  "I can't stay very long because my dad says I'm supposed to be in trouble or something, but he also said to come up and see if you wanted to come over for dinner tonight!  That means you two are friends again, right?  You're gonna come, aren't you?"

I smiled.  "I would love to, Mike, but I really can't."

"Oh, well, that's okay too.  You can come over some other time!"  He looked around me and into the apartment.  "Why are all your things in boxes?"

"Well, you see..." I sighed.  There wasn't going to be an easy way of doing this.  "I'm moving away, kiddo."

"To a different apartment?"

I shook my head.  "Nope--to a whole different colony chain, kiddo.  I'd really feel weird if I stuck around here.  I need to get my life back on track and I can't do that the right way if I stay here."

"Why not?"

"It's...  Look, Mike, it's hard to explain, but I have to go and meet a shuttle at four-thirty.  I'm sorry, I really am.  I'll write to you if you want, though, and your dad can read the letters out loud for you until you learn to decipher my handwriting, and I'll send you presents on your birthday, I promise."  A thought occurred to me.  "Hey, when is your birthday?"

"Jūni-gatsu tōka," he said, wiping his nose.

It took me a moment to translate that.  "December tenth.  Got it."  He looked surprised and I grinned.  "Hey, I used to work with your dad.  I had to pick up at least some of the lingo if I wanted to understand what the heck he was saying."

"Oh."  Mike was staring at the floor.  "I don't want you to go."

"I don't want to go either, kiddo, but I--"

"Then _don't _go!"

"Michael, leave him alone," Heero scolded as he rounded the corner and came into view.  He rested a hand on top of Mike's head and looked at me.  "You're leaving the colony?"

I cringed and nodded.  "Yup."

"Why are you doing that?"

I couldn't look him in the eyes, but that was all right because he wasn't meeting my gaze either.  He was going to be relieved when I left, no doubt about it.  "It's...  It's just time for me to go.  You understand that, right?"

"I suppose.  Well.  Would you like a ride?"

Ouch.  I knew he wanted me out, but that hurt.  "Well, I just figured I would take a taxi or something.  They aren't _that_ expensive, after all, so I could probably afford it.  And Wu-bear told me to call him if I needed anything so he could wire me some cash if I absolutely needed it, or--"

"I'll take you in my car," Heero said firmly.  "The taxis here are...  Well, it will just be easier for me to give you a ride.  And it will give us a chance to talk things over and perhaps you will change your mind."

I didn't really believe that he wanted me to change my mind, but I agreed to let him drive me anyway, mainly because I wanted a chance to say goodbye to Mike, but also because I was hoping to save on cab fair.  So sue me; I'm cheap.

A few hours passed and before I knew it I was in the passenger's seat of Heero's car with Mike and all of my luggage in the back seat.  Heero had a fairly nice car, too, although it wasn't really to my tastes.  The interior was all leather and it smelled great--and there were cup holders!  You don't see many cars with cup holders these days, which is really a shame.  You see, cup holders are just as important to a car as a radio is.  Without all those little essentials, a car just isn't really much of a car.

The station, when we finally got to it, was crowded and bustling; everyone seemed to be doing something and they were rushing every which way.  Heero decided that he and Mike had to help me get all my stuff out of the car and over to the shuttle's luggage carrier: it would be sent off the next day to follow my shuttle and would be there waiting for me when I got off of the thing.  Once we'd put down all of the luggage--except for my backpack, which I was taking on board with me--Heero pulled me aside to talk.

"Why are you doing this?" he asked me.

I shook off his hand.  "It's just something I've got to do, man.  This is all too much for me and I've got to get out of here."

He scowled.  "You're running away."

"I am not."

"You're not?  Then explain what you are doing this for!  You can start a new life here if that is what you really want to do--Michael would be thrilled if you stayed."

I shook my head.  "No.  Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to pick up my shuttle ticket."  I walked away from him and over to the ticket counter lines.  Mike found me just as I reached the front of the line and he approached.

"You and my dad still don't like each other, do you?  That's why you're leaving us," he accused.

I flushed, remembering recent events, and shook my head.  "That's not exactly true, Mike.  Look, your dad and I--"

"Hey, buddy, you're holding up the line!  Are you going to get your ticket or not?" the guy standing behind me grumbled.

"Yeah, just hang on," I said.  Then I turned back to Mike.  "As I was saying.  Your dad and I used to be really good friends and all that, sure, but we had a really bad fight and it's not something we can go and forget just like that.  It's a little like the fights Bulbo and Mindy are always having on the television, but we may never be able to make up for it.  Do you understand?"

"No," Mike said stubbornly.

I sighed.  "All right, it really doesn't matter; all you need to know is that stuff happens that sometimes you just can't bring yourself to forget about.  And then there's really nothing you can do about it."

The man behind me cleared his throat.  "Look, buddy, some of us have shuttles to catch.  We don't have all day!  Are you gonna buy a ticket or not?"

"Fuck off, man!  Can't you see I'm trying to have a heart-to-heart with the kid over here?" I yelled.  Then I turned back to Mike.  "Your dad and I can't be friends again, not ever.  Too much time has passed for something like that to happen."

"Mindy and Bulbo are always saying and doing bad things to each other but they always end up being friends again, no matter what!  They just say they're sorry and things are okay again!"

"Sometimes it's too late to say sorry, kiddo."

"Mindy always says that it's never too late to say you're sorry."

I smiled cynically.  "Mindy is wrong."

Mike swiped at his eyes and I was a little disturbed to see that he was actually trying not to cry.  "I don't think she's wrong," he insisted, "and I think you and my dad can still be friends!  You just have to make up and then you'll be okay again, you'll see!  And then we could all live happily ever after, just like in my stories or like on the TV!"

"Happy endings don't happen in real life, kiddo.  I hate to break it to you, but it's true."

"Oh, for heaven's sake," the man behind me grumbled.  "Hurry it up, will ya?"

"Fine, fine, keep your pants on."  I turned to the ticket booth.  "I reserved a ticket this morning for one Duo Maxwell.  You have it?"

"One moment sir and I'll check," the man in the booth said.  He started looking through his things and then nodded, slipping an envelope through the slot thing.  "That's fifty-nine credits, sir."

"Great."  I handed the booth man my card and took my ticket.  He slipped my card back through the slot and nodded.

"Have a nice day, sir."

"Will do.  Thanks!"  I turned around and led Mike away from the booth with me.  "Sorry, kiddo, but there's nothing I can do about it anymore."  I looked at my ticket with a critical eye.  "All right, I need to find platform forty-two.  Any idea where that is?"

"No," Mike said sullenly.

I smiled.  "All right, that's fine.  I think it's over that way," I said, pointing to my left.  "Where'd you put your dad?"

"I'm here," Heero said, coming out of the crowd with a frown on his face.  "And I would like to mention that I do not approve of what you are doing."

"You say that like it matters to me anymore," I responded.  "Anyway, I think the platform I'm looking for is over... this way more," I said.  "And I'm pretty sure I can find my way there by myself, so you guys can vamoose is you want."

"We'll see you off," Heero said determinedly, following me to the platform.

It took a bit of time to find platform forty-two, but when we did I was impressed by just how busy it looked.  Families were saying goodbye and giving out their parting hugs and stuff like that and getting on the shuttle in tears.  Other people were efficient and quick about it, getting on the shuttle with only a wave for the people they were leaving behind.  I decided I wanted to be on of the efficient people, so I waved and started on board.  Mike stopped me.

"Duo!" he cried, rushing forward.

I turned around again.  "What's up now, kiddo?"

"Don't go," he begged, hugging my leg.  I knelt down and gave him a proper hug.

"I have to, kiddo.  'May your wishes all come true and every dream be found; may God be ever near and joy be all around,' Psalm 37:4," I recited.  "Any idea what that means, kiddo?"

Mike shook his head, eyes suspiciously moist again.  "Nuh-uh."

"It's a religious thing and, roughly paraphrased, it means that you're going to be just fine.  I just want what's best for you, Mike."

"But the best thing for me is you!  Why can't you and my dad just try to get along?  Wufei said you were best friends back when you were fighting the Wizard of Oz!  Why can't you guys just be friends again so you can stay around?"

"Because your dad and I just don't work well together," I responded.  "We've gone too far to turn back and start all over again.  Does that make any sense?"

"You're saying that you and my dad can't ever be friends," Mike said sullenly.  The tears were starting to really pour down his cheeks now and _boy_ did I feel guilty.  "But Wufei said--"

"Grown ups say a lot of things, Mike, and most of them are dead wrong.  Wufei especially.  He likes happy endings too much.  In his stories, the prince and princess always ride off into the sunset and get their happily-ever-after ending and nothing ever goes wrong for them.  But life usually just doesn't work like that.  Besides, you don't need me hanging around."  I gave him a hug.  "You're going to be just fine.  You and your dad are going to forget all about me sooner or later, just wait and see.  Then this will all seem like one big dream.  It'll be okay, I promise."

"I like Wufei's version of the story a lot better," he sobbed, latching onto my neck.  "Please don't leave us, Duo!  I want you to stay!"

"I can't, Mike."  I sort of peeled him off of me and then I stood up.  "Now I've got to go.  My shuttle leaves in five minutes and I still have to get my bag checked.  I'll see you when I see you."

He sniffled, wiping his noise with his sleeve.  "I'll miss you."

"Ditto.  Mike?"

"Yeah?"

"Big boys don't cry."

He wiped his cheeks with the back of hid hand and looked up at me again.  "Okay."

I ruffled his hair.  "Good boy.  Bye, Mike."  I picked up my backpack and walked away then, leaving him there on the platform, crying softly to himself and trying not to let anyone see his tears.  I didn't look back.  Hell, I had a shuttle to catch; I didn't have time to watch him bawl!

Christ, don't look at me like that!  Of course I felt like a heartless bastard, what do you expect?  You can't just abandon a kid like that without feeling really awful!  I felt like my heart was being ripped in two pieces and all of a sudden I didn't know if I was doing the right thing or not.  I didn't want to leave Mike like that, but I knew that it was only going to hurt even more if I waited a few weeks or whatever and then left.  Even now I'm wondering if maybe my real reason for leaving the colony was to keep Mike from hurting too much.  Of course, that could just be my mind making excuses again.

Anyway, the baggage check was quick and not very thorough, so I managed to get on the shuttle in record time.  The shuttle itself was roomy, but all sorts of people were walking around the place, trying to find their seats and stuff like that and it made everything seem really crowded.  The seats were also pretty close together, which made it hard to get around and I just knew that the ride wasn't going to be a really comfortable one.  But I found my seat, stowed my backpack in the compartment by my feet, and sat back to enjoy the ride.

Problem was, I had a window seat that faced the platform I had just left.  So when I looked out of the window, I saw Mike in his father's arms, crying into Heero's shoulder, and I saw Heero doing his best to comfort the boy.  It was a little weird because that sweet and caring demeanor just seemed so very different from the hard, cruel warrior I'd known so long ago.  And that's when it occurred to me that Heero had changed; he wasn't the cold-hearted bastard who had left me to die and had killed hundreds of thousands of people, not anymore.  Now he was just Heero, a real live person with feelings and emotions and the whole spiel.  He wasn't a robot anymore and he wasn't a monster, he was a human being.  Heero had changed--he'd gotten out of the banister.  And suddenly I wanted to be out too, more than anything in the world, and I just _knew_ that the only way to do that was to get off the shuttle and get back on that platform with Heero and Mike.

I had to get off the shuttle and I had to do it immediately.

I started to undo my seat belt and grab for my backpack, but one of the flight attendants spotted me and came over to make me stop. 

"Sir, the shuttle is about to leave the station.  Please stay in your seat."

"No, I've got to get off.  Sorry."

She frowned at me.  "Sir, the automated system has already initiated the count-down.  There's not enough time for you to get off the shuttle unless we stop the system and start it over again and that would put us too far behind schedule.

"No, you don't get it!  I have to get off!"

"Sir, you can't do that.  We'll be leaving the station in less than a minute and we can't open the doors for boarding or unloading until we stop at the next station."

As if on cue, the automated shuttle system started the countdown.  "Preparing to leave the station in thirty seconds.  Please be seated and buckle your seat belts.  We will experience some minor turbulence, but it is nothing to be--" and it continued.

I couldn't be too late, I just couldn't be.  "Let me off of this god-damned shuttle!" I yelled, struggling to my feet and pushing my way into the aisle.  The attendant started looking on her belt for something, probably her stun-gun device, so she could stop me, but I was saved by some sort of commotion closer to the front of the shuttle.

A man had forced the doors open and was addressing the passengers.  "Ladies and gentlemen, I'm afraid you'll have to get off of this shuttle.  A fuel pipe was severed and it is too dangerous to lift off with it out of commission."  He was the shuttle maintenance man, I realized, judging by the regulation jumper thing he was wearing.  "You will be relocated onto platform twenty-six.  The shuttle will leave in twenty minutes."  When no one moved, he cleared his throat.  "Everyone get off!" he repeated loudly.

Everyone started looking around for their stuff.  The flight attendant looked at me wide-eyed and I grinned at her.  "Just call me Psychic Bob," I said with a wink.  Then I grabbed my bag and darted out of the shuttle before anyone else could even step into the aisle.

I was the first one out and I was immediately attacked by a five-year old bundle of energy, who latched himself onto my waist.

"Duo!  Don't go, please don't go!  I don't want you to leave and neither does my dad!  Please please please promise not to leave us!"

When I answered, it was Heero I was looking at.  "All right, Mike.  I promise."  Mike cheered and hugged me tighter, cutting off my air supply.  When I finally managed to catch my breath, I smiled apologetically at Heero.  "I'm sorry," I told him.  "I get it now--it wasn't your fault."

Heero smirked, but it wasn't a mean smirk at all.  "I knew you'd see that eventually," he said.  "So what are you going to do now?"

"Oh, I don't know.  Find a warm gutter to sleep in, maybe, or beg Benny-the-bastard-landlord to give me my apartment back.  Something like that."

"I've got a better idea."

"Oh?  And what would that be?"

He smiled kindly and pulled me closer to him.  "This," he whispered just before his lips caught my own in the most wonderful kiss of my life.  He smelled a lot like shuttle fuel and I thought I knew why, but that was absolutely okay with me.

When we stopped molesting each other's mouths, I grinned.  "You know what?" I began.  "That sounds like a pretty good idea to me."

"Good."  Heero took one of Mike's hands.  "Come on, it's time to go home."

Mike looked at me suspiciously.  "He means all of us, right?"

I laughed.  "Yes, kiddo, he means all of us."

He responded with a grin.  "Good."

And so we went home.

Anyway, that's the end of my happy little tale.  Well, not quite the end, I guess, but it's definitely the best place to stop, you know?  Because nothing too major has happened in the two days that have passed between then and now.  Comparatively nothing, anyway.

I got a call from Wufei not too long after we all got back the other day.  He and Kyla had a little girl who, according to Wufei, resembles him more than she does Kyla.  The conversation went a little something like this:

"It's a girl," he told me as soon as I picked up the phone.  He had a huge grin plastered on his face, which sounds sticky but really isn't.  "We named her Sterling."

"What does she look like?"

He paused, thinking that over.  "Have you ever seen the Flintstones?"

"The old cartoon with the cavemen and the dinosaurs?  Of course I have--that's a classic cartoon and you know how I feel about the classics."

"Well, do you remember the little green alien that would occasionally follow the main characters around and make their lives a living hell?  Kudzu?"

I smiled.  "I think you mean the Great Gazoo."

"Sure.  Well, she looks a little bit like that."

It took a moment for me to let that register, but when I did I was shocked.  "_What_?"

He started to laugh, the bastard.  "You are as stupid and gullible as ever," he said between chortles.  "Hang on and I may have a colony to sell you next!"

I hung up on him then, but he called me back after he recovered and we talked a lot more.  Heero got pissed because I was taking major whaps at his phone bill, but I pointed out to him that it was my phone in any case and that I would pay him back eventually, so he calmed down.

Yeah, I'm still living with Heero and Mike in their apartment.  We had to sort through all of my crap after we retrieved it from the shuttle's luggage carrier and then we had a bit of a yard sale, so to speak.  I made a good amount of money that way.  Who knew that I could have accumulated so much _stuff_ in such a short time?  Well, we kept all of the important stuff and Heero practically ordered me to move in.  I think he believes he owes me or something.

Well, the first night at Heero's place was a little weird, especially so far as the sleeping arrangements were concerned.  I started out on the couch but Heero started feeling guilty around midnight and made me switch places with him so _he _was on the couch and I got the bed.  That made me feel pretty bad, of course, and so around one o'clock in the morning I made him switch back.  This happened a few more times before we started to quarrel and such (quietly, though, so we didn't wake up Mike) before we finally decided to save ourselves the trouble and share the bed.  Hell, it wasn't as though we'd never done that before.

Did you know that Heero's a cuddler?  I'm serious, he is!  Once he falls asleep he curls around anyone or anything that may be in that bed with him.  When I woke up the next morning, his limbs were all entwined and tangled up with mine.  I felt like a big teddy bear or something; that was definitely okay with me.

Mike seems to think we're having a sleepover or something and he gets a real kick out of it all.

Heero goes online a lot now, looking for a new place on a good, kid-friendly colony or even on Earth, if he can afford it.  I asked why he was suddenly so willing to leave the colony but he only smirked and told me that circumstances had changed.  I think it may have something to do with Stacey, but who knows?  He wouldn't say.

I _did_ finally find out what it is Heero does for a living, though, and it was definitely a total accident.  I happened to answer the phone when his boss called--that was a fun conversation.  The boss lady was pissed that he'd left midway through on his business trip, but I explained the situation to her, being careful to leave out a few incriminating details.  Would you believe that Heero works for a security company?  His job is to test out all sorts of security systems all over the galaxy, find the problems, and then fix the bugs.  And when I say he tests out the security, he _really_ tests it out.  Heero's paid to shoot things and run.  How cool is that?  Anyway, his last trip, the one that was cut short, was to the Preventers, which was why Wufei was told to pass along that message from Lady Une.  Quite a coincidence, huh?

When I asked Heero for details on his job, he just shrugged and said he mainly just designed and fixed security systems.  It involves a lot of computer work and the occasional business trip and he says that he hates it.  He told me that he was going to get a new job after the move.

Speaking of which, Heero asked me if I would come along when they moved.  He knows that there's nothing left to keep me on this colony and that Mike would love it if I came.  There was the added bonus that the two of us are definitely a little more than "just friends" right now and that we could heat up that relationship a little if I came along.  He told me that last night, after we put Michael to bed, and he took his sweet time explaining his motives in great detail.

You can interpret that however you want.

I told him that I'd have to think about it, but there really isn't anything much to think about, when you get right down to it.  I want to go with them, of course, and there's nothing stopping me anymore.  There will be more job opportunities for me no matter where we go and I'll be able to keep an eye on both Mike and Heero.  I'm not about to let him run away again.  Besides, I can't deny that the sex is great.

I've recently been toying with the idea of tracking down Quatre and Trowa, although I'm going to run the idea by Heero first.  I don't think he'll care, given that just yesterday he mentioned having Wufei, Kyla, and the new baby over sometime, after we've settled into the new place.  And it should be easy enough to find Quatre and Trowa, right?  I mean, Quatre is one of the richest men alive, second to only the Peacecraft family, so far as I know, and Trowa is probably still good friends with Quatre.  It would be nice to see them and have some sort of reunion and catch up on things and all.  That would be great, right?

Of course it would be.

Heero and I have been exchanging a lot of war stories lately, between his on-line real estate project and my excursions with Mike.  There's a lot of stuff that I'd forgotten about and a lot of things that scared the shit out of us back in the war but makes us laugh ourselves to death now.  It's great to talk about that sort of thing again--Wufei and I always avoided the subject.  I mean, just yesterday we were talking about--oh, jeez, look at the time.  Sorry about that.  You probably want to be on your way, don't you?  All right, I'll get on with it.

Since no story would be complete without a bunch of lessons, I guess I should tell you what this whole thing taught me.  So here goes...  For one thing, sometimes you've got to go back in order to forward.  And little kids like Mike are experts when it comes to throwing your life in your face and then helping you fix it.  Jeez, just hanging around with Mike taught me that if you keep digging you're eventually going to reach the other side of the earth.  If you just stop in the middle or quit altogether, life is just going to be a real hellhole.  You've got to finish things every so often.  And I've learned that dreams come true, whether you want them to or not, and that happy ending do happen more often than you'd think.

Most of all, though, I've learned that sometimes in life you get caught between a banister, but you almost always get out of there eventually.

Even if you do occasionally need some help.

THE END


End file.
